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COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 



The Vaunt of Man 
and other poems 



Other Books by William Ellery Leonard 

Byron and Byronism in America, Columbia Uni- 
versity Press, New York. A study in literary back- 
grounds before the Civil War. $i.o6, postpaid. 

The Fragments of Empedocles, Open Court Pub- 
lishing Co., Chicago. A translation in blank verse 
with introductory study and explanatory notes. 
$i.o8, postpaid. 

The Poet of Galilee, B. W. Huebsch, New York. 
An examination of the sayings of Jesus from the 
point of view of literary criticism. $i.o8, postpaid. 

The Oregon Trail of Francis Parkman, edited 
with introduction and notes. Ginn and Co., Bos- 
ton. 

Glory of the Morning, The Wisconsin Dramatic 
Society, Madison. A one act Indian play in poetic 
prose. 40 cents, postpaid. 

IN PREPARATION 

A New ^^sop. The Open Court Publishing Co., Chi- 
cago. Fables, adapted and original, in humorous 
verse. 

Lucretius, a blank verse translation of the entire six 
books. 



The Vaunt of Man 

and other poems 



rt)(w^^' 



William Ellery Leonard 



New York 

B. W. Hucbsch 

1912 



Copyright, 1912, bf 
B. W. Huebscb 



Printed in U. S. A. 






gCI.A3l9935 



THE SUPERSCRIPTION j 

■\ 

White soul, too white for us who work with clay, \ 
Sweet mistress of the gentle flowers and birds. 

Harshly compelled to speak your loving words i 

So long but to the subtle beasts of prey: \ 

I was your earthly husband for a day, j 

Too strange a nature for an eye so blue; \ 

And yet so honest was my love to you, I 

I gave you something ere you went away. ... I 

Vve set no stone upon the grave out there. 

Whither in all my years I shall not go; | 

But, conquering pain, and pity, and despair, ] 

I bind these leaves with solemn hands and slow: ' 

'I 

My poems — all my sacred best of life — ;) 

Be yours forever, O my wife, my wife! \ 



The Heavens and the Earth, 
and all that is between them, 
think ye we have created them 
in jest! 

— The Koran, 

Se tu segui tua Stella, 
Non puoi fallire al glorioso 
porto. 

— Dante, 



PREFACE 

These rhymes record, by quite unconscious plan, 
What life from year to year may mean to man. 
Scarce one but had its rise in common-place, 
In old experience of the human race — 
And yet not one without some How or When 
No man on earth can ever feel again. 
I made the record that I might be free 
Through mastering art, lest life should master me- 
Finding in art, creating as I went, 
A world more luminous and eloquent. 

W. E. L. 

Madison, Wisconsin, 
Mid-summer, 1911. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

For permission to reprint a num- 
ber of the poems thanks are due to 
the Atlantic Monthly, the Cen- 
tury, the Forum, etc. For much 
inspiration in the writing and help 
In preparation for the press I am 
indebted to Ludwig Lewisohn. 



Contents 



Page 



11. 



Love that Won 










The Vaunt of Man 17 


Alone You Passed 20 


Loved and Lovely 21 


One Woman .22 


When Came the Moment ... 23 


To the Evening Star .... 24 


Under the Sky 


The Windward Slope .... 27 


Anti-rococo 








28 


For a Decadent , 








29 


Rain 








30 


Natura Magna . 








31 


For Husbandmen . . 








32 


For Our Fathers' Sons 








33 


The Great Stone Face . 








34 


Mount Washington . 








35 


For a Forest Walker , 








36 


A Tryst 








37 


With Mother Earth 








. 38 


Behind the Old House , 








. 39 


Games 








40 


The Wildman . . 








. 41 


Primordial Earth . ;, 








42 


The Ancient Mariner , 


K n 






. 46 


The Steamer .... 








' 47 


Coastwise .... 








. 48 



Contents 



Page 

The Wreck 49 

The Express ....... 50 

Ultima Thule 51 

Prayer to the Man-bird .... 53 

Upland Lights 55 

The Ruined House 57 

To an Elf 58 

The Scarlet Skater 59 

The Scholar's Return .... 61 



III. The Issues of Life 

Out From God's House .... 65 

A Psalm of the Prayerless ... 66 

Epilogue 67 

The Rose 68 

Pain and Speech 69 

The Law With Life for Gloss . . 70 

Compensation 71 

Threefold Life 72 

Wanderers 73 

Fragment ......... 74 

Love Afar • 75 

II Ben deir Intelletto .... 76 

When Death Shall Come ... 77 

Success 78 

Xaepe ^m\ .: • ;• •; :• • :• 79 

Obscurity 80 

The Law Prevails . . . . . 81 



Contents 

Page 

For a School of Artists .... 82 

To the Victor 83 

The Vagabond 84 

Mens Immortalls 85 

The Poet In the City 86 

Vigil 87 

For a Drudger 88 

With the Age 89 

The Muse 90 

The World and the Soul ... 91 

1^ The Good Cause 92 

Not an Academician 93 

The Phantom Skater .... 94 
I Feel Me Near to Some High 

Thing 95 

The Test 96 

The Crisis 97 

Prayer in the House of Pain ... 98 

IV. Love that Lost 

The Bitterest Hour loi 

The Jester ....... 102 

A Voyage • • 105 

Archilochus 106 

The Drachenfels ...... 107 

The Image of Delight .... 108 

Postscript 109 

Resolve ........ no 



Contents 

Page 

V. Men of High Report 

Lincoln 115 

Kaiser Wilhelm in Bonn . , .121 

Edgar Allan Poe 122 

Walt Whitman 123 

VI. America 

Remarks 127 

Israel 128 

Inauguration Ode 129 



VII. Five Cities 

The Aery City . . 
Venice in Rain 
The White Metropolis 
New York in Sunset 
Urbs Triumphans 



135 
136 
137 
138 
139 



VIII. The Unjust . . . 

Prefatory 145 

Mein Tischgenosse . . .. . .146 

The Editor . 147 

A Hypocrite ....... 148 

In College Days . ,. . .: . .149 
The Insulting Letter . . . . .150 

My Defence 151 

The Laird of Leith 152 

Epilogue 153 



Contents 
IX. . 



Page 

. . and the Just 

A Dedication 157 

With Some Manuscript Poems . .158 

The Sculptor 159 

A Presentation 160 

In Reply 161 

Invitation 162 

Lady, Not Mine 164 

The Phantom Child 165 

New York Days 167 

To Friends 171 

In Memoriam 172 



X. 



Translation and Paraphrase 


The Creation of the Morrov 


V , .175 


Heraclitus, the Obscure . 


. . . 176 


Achilles and Athene . 


. . . 180 


A Home-coming Long Ago 


. . . 181 


A Roman Pleasantry . . 


,. . 182 


The Sail ..... 


. . . 183 


Buddha 


. . . 184 


Choice :. 


. . . 185 


The Ideal 


, :. . 186 


Rondeau , 


. . . 187 


Mignon ..... 


. . , 188 



XI. Midway Upon the Road 

Midway Upon the Road . . . .191 
For the New Year 192 



I. Love that Won 



The Vaunt of Man 
I. 

WHEN I shall make my vaunt before the Lord, 
I shall not name my thrift of knowledge won: 
The winged urns unearthed in Babylon, 
The Greek palimpsest wondrously restored, 
Nor what of rock or plant in field and fiord 
I brought from where the Scandian rivers run, 
Nor my Uranian lore of moon and sun, 
Nor deep-sea soundings with the lead and cord. 

But I shall boast my cunning in Romance: 

How, Heart-of- Woman, along a trail in Ind 

I met thee footsore on thine ancient quest 

And knew thy need with manhood's swiftest glance — 

Thy solemn grief so long unmedicined. 

The wound thy hand was hiding in thy breast. 

11. 

Nor when I speak my boast before the King, 
Shall I proclaim my deeds of song and sight, 
My rainbow visions conjured out of night, 
My island cities with ships of hope a-wing 
Out in the oceans of imagining, 
Nor forest hymns upon my mountain height, 
Nor the loud paeans to the morning light 
In rolling meters of my sea singing. 

[17] 



The Vaunt of Man 

But I shall boast how once, O Child of Earth, 

Whilst thou wert weeping in the desert South, 

I, passing that way with flowers and wine and bread, 

Restored for immortality the mirth 

Of those blue eyes and kissed thee on the mouth 

With sudden hands of joy upon thy head. 

III. 

when I make my plea before our God, 

1 shall not boast my sufferance and pain, 

The whirlwind snows that blinded on the plain, 
The smoke I breathed, the lava fields I trod, 
With head unhooded and burning feet unshod. 
Nor fettered hours in Houses of Disdain 
With anarch Ignorance and Custom Vain, 
Nor strength achieved by bowing to the rod. 

But I shall boast, O Bride forever bright, 
Forever young (with blossoms from the glade, 
The hill, the lake I crown thee mistress of). 
Delight, delight and evermore delight. 
The hearth I kindled and the boat I made, 
And quiet years as minister of love. 

IV. 

So when I make my boast before the Throne, 
I shall not mention what was mine of praise, 
[i8] 



The Vaunt of Man 

The silver cup for swiftness in the race, 

Nor bossed medals stamped with name mine own 

For Turk or Tartar in Palaestra thrown, 

Nor bells that pealed my battles in old days. 

Graved scrolls with civic seals, nor public bays 

For the deep thoughts I carved in bronze and stone. 

But I shall name, O lyric Life, thy name; 
Show the proud tokens, the ring, the odorous hair, 
Love's fiery print upon my lips and eyes; 
And strip my bosom as 'twere a thing of fame, 
And say, " This glorious Lady slumbered there, 
And made these arms her earthly Paradise." 



[19] 



Alone You Passed 

ALONE you passed beyond the Golden Gate, 
Toward the red Hesperus o'er the western seas 
To broad-browed idols of the Japanese — 
But their grim lips were silent where they sate; 
Alone I sailed earth's other path of fate, 
Out toward the morning star where Egypt Is, 
Where the Sphinx guards her bleak eternities — 
But I returned, like you, forlorn and late; 

Then wandering Inland from each divided coast 
Across the multitudinous continent, 
Strangers by hill and stream without an aim, 
We met even in the hour we doubted most, 
And each in each achieved the great Event — 
The oracle, the sacrificial flame. 



[20] 



O Loved and Lovely 

O LOVED and lovel}^ on the mountain crest, 
O auburn hair the clouds are shining on, 
White arms uplifted to the setting sun. 
Prophetic eyes that see beyond the west, 
O whispering voice, my tumult and my rest, 
Star of the twilight next that burning one, 
Which yonder in heaven holds bright dominion. 
Through song of mine shalt thou be manifest! — 

For from my wings thy fire hath purged the pain, 

For on my eyes thy light hath poured the light, 

And on my mouth is thine immortal kiss; 

Nor can thy presence be bestowed in vain 

On me, the Lyrist's eager acolyte, 

That long hath prayed for such a task as this. 



[21] 



One Woman 

So incomplete, you cry? 
Your service incomplete? — 
O could you mark, when you are passing by, 
How many watch your feet. 

Of no account, you say? 

Your life of narrow scope? — 

O could you know, when you but kneel to pray, 

How many dare to hop?. 

No center to your soul? 

No force worth while? — 

O could you guess how beautiful and whole 

May be a woman's smile. 

God has, In plenty, steel 

Tempered for war's employ — 

But needs the most for his great commonweal 

The rose of peace and joy. 



[22] 



\\Tien Came the Moment 

WHEN came the moment of your life to me, 
After my evil years, I said : " At last 
Is service, peace, and splendor; I am saved 
In saving her." The times of summer flowers 
On hills beyond the city, and of stars 
By twilights on the memorable lake, 
The winter's reading, and the helpfulness 
In mutual old simplicities of life, 
Were ours by seasons, were they not ? — And still 
We were two lovers to the end, despite 
The alien sounds forever on the stair. 
And older sorrows of a shadowy house 
To which a solemn duty bound us both. . . . 
Two lovers to the end . . . the awful end. . . , 



[23] 



To the Evening Star 

WHITE star, beyond the houses and the hills, 
That beaconest a solemn all-is-well 
Across the twilight to the fates of men, 
From out the seeming Distance; lonely star, 
Companioning our uncompanioned griefs, 
Till surges something of thy holy light, 
Some still suffusion of immortality, 
Through the hushed soul, and time and space no more, 
And the divisions of the grave no more 
Convince us into martyrdom: O star, 
Keep, keep the child with thee until I come. . • • 



[24] 



11. Under the Sky 



The Windward Slope 

COME! — let us live upon the windward slope! 
Come ! — let us look, magnanimous and free ! 
Come! — where the sunshine gilds eternity! 
Come! — where the lightning has primeval scope! 
Come from the caverns of your sordid hope, 
Your meager thought, ye pallid folk, with me! 
Come ! — where the mountains neighbor on the sea 
And wild sea-twilight fronts the windward slope! 

There the four regions of primordial heaven! 
There the four elements and planets seven ! — 
And the cool torrents of essential air, 
And the swift spark and luminous breath of fire, 
And odorous earth and lucid water there 
Feed blood and bone and spirit and desire! 



[27I 



Anti-rococo 

I WOULD make mention of primeval things, 
Oceans, horizons, rains, and winds that bear 
Moist seeds from isle to isle, caves, mountain air 
And echoes, clouds and shadows of their wings 
On lakes or hillsides, autumns after springs 
In starlight, sleep and breathing and the blare 
Of life's reveille, love, birth, death and care 
Of sunken graves of peasants as of kings, 

The wide world over, — 

O be bold, be free! 
Strip of? this perfumed fabric from your verse, 
Tear from your windows all the silk and lace ! — 
And stand, man, woman, on the slope by me, 
O once again before the universe, 
O once again with Nature face to face! 



[28] 



For a Decadent 

LIVE out In air! Drink the swift life of winds, 
Warm o'er the summer fields and sweet with 
flowers, 
And buoyant with the salts of primal earth, 
Or cold and vital over starry snows. 
Live in the sun ! and far from evil men. 
To the great sun bare breast and throat and thigh, 
And hail at morn with naked upstretched arms 
The promise of the wide day and the sun ! 

Thus, plenished with an ancient strength, shalt thou 
Leap from the rocks and swim the sea and reach 
The Island caves and bind the mermaid's hair; 
Or push through brake and briar up the cliffs 
Out over all the mountain gulfs of pine, 
And stand with summit gods, primevally! 



[29] 



Rain 

WHO loves the sun and stars shall love the rain; 
Who walks the mountain with the golden cloud 
Shall cringe not at the mountain thunder, loud 
Beyond the lightning and the hurricane. 
Who swims the blue cove shall abide the main 
When black with storms, still buoyant and uncowed; 
Who feels earth's light about him as a shroud, 
Shall feel earth's vast, earth's elemental rain. 

O love ye not the forest, bird, and flower, 
And shadowy shapes of sunlight down the glen. 
And moonbeams scattered in the midnight wood? 
O wait! O listen! Earth's revolving hour 
Brings ye anon the forest rain again 
And dusk and music of her ancient mood ! 



[30] 



Natura Magna 

GAZE not at hearth-flame nor at funeral pyre 
Too long In dreams or tears ; but rise and bare 
Your souls to lightning; see the mountain flare 
Forth its wild torrents of essential fire! 
Sit not too long by well-springs of desire 
In shadowy woodlands with the white nymphs ; fare 
Out to blue ocean and the sun-bright air ! — 
Hark ! the deep voice : " Exult ye, and aspire ! 

" As some god's festival on holy ground 
Ye shall approach my universe afar, 
Naked and swift as heroes, from all climes; 
Thus ye shall fill an epos with new sound. 
Thus ye shall yield new names for many a star, 
And thus from ye shall date the aftertimes." 



[31] 



For Husbandmen 

{On the Coast.) 

NO more shall thunder and the lightning's bane 
Darken and terrify the populous lea — 
The afternoon comes buoyant from the sea, 
Like a fresh dawn across an upland plain! 
The shadows sweep the purple hills again; 
At mountain distance rides the rainbow free; 
There is a whisper as of days to be, 
And earth's new odor rises after rain 

In golden steam. — 

O husbandmen, go forth! 
Primeval, wise, shag-browed and large of hand, 
Ye workers still beneath the law of old ! — 
The utmost cities of the South and North 
Await their health of ye ; and all the land 
Against late years for ye puts by its gold. 



[32] 



For Our Fathers' Sons 

WE must be heroes! Earth's old rivers flow- 
But earth's religions comfort us no more, 
And the old faith that looked so far of yore, 
Lies, with all temples, bare to wind and snow; 
But standing at our fathers' graves we know 
(And this is much) that, spite of waste and war, 
'Twere to deny our being to give o'er: 
We shall be heroes ! And for strength we go 

(Will ye not go?) out to the mountains! — Still, 
Though we have glossed anew the psalmist's verse, 
Our help shall come from out the ancient hill, 
And we shall promise largely and fulfill. 
Feeling, as heroes, our unconquered will, 
Part of the epic of the universe! 



[33] 



The Great Stone Face 

PRIMEVAL Presence, enthroned upon white space, 
Who feel'st the lightnings wither on thy cheek, 
Whose iron lips to cloud and thunder speak, 
While slumbering aeons crowd thy shadowy base ; 
Who seest far city, stream, and planted place 
And the blue sunlight on the hundredth peak — 
Inexorable, calm, abiding, bleak — 
Hail! genius of the mountains, awful face. 

Hail and farewell! My spirit faints, and soft 
The winds blow inland from eternity; 
Thee 'twere not well revisiting too oft 
If I would bind the sheaves allotted me — 
Thee, nor the everlasting stars aloft, 
Nor reaches of the irrevocable sea. 



[34] 



Mount Washington 

I SAID: " This morn I will the vision seek;" 
So In the sheer car up the mount I spun 
O'er pines and shag ravines, and stepped anon 
High on the iron summit, piled and bleak. 
Here shone the white eternity! here peak 
To peak his huge design rolled on and on — 
Grand as the thunder, silent as the sun ! — 
Till histories, arts, religions, man were weak. 

But ah, I lost the thrill, the joy, the fear; 
And from a crag I murmured : " Soul can know 
The kingdoms of the larger atmosphere 
Only when soul toils from the place below — 
O would my feet were torn with flint and brerc, 
Or still were wandering where the lilies grow," 



[35] 



For a Forest Walker 

{In Franconia.) 

OUAFF the mid-forest spring! Sink palms and 
knees 
In the deep moss and let the big rank ferns 
Strike on the flushed cheek and the fevered neck, 
And let thy hair, warmed in those sultry shades, 
Float, with the oozy twigs and yellow leaves, 
The near black water ! O with pursed lips 
Quaff till thou feelst it cool in heart and frame — 
Then up through pines and thickets to the light! 

Yonder the valley and the mountain lake! 
The sunset clouds are trembling in the waves, 
The wild deer drink among the windy rocks; 
And thou shalt call for joy aloud, and hear 
A mountain echo that will die away 
Seven times repeated on the crimson air! 



[36] 



A Tryst 

AFTER the evil years, so long alone — 
Thou in dusk chambers by the sullen wave, 
I at the foothills in a shadowy cave — 
O sister — spirit, we are free! Our own 
Here in wild twilight is the trysting stone. 
Here on the slope, which high winds lash and lave, 
As seas a promontory. O be brave. 
And range the starry night from zone to zone 

With me, my sister! 

Hesperus is before us! 
Behind the mount, unseen our sorrows sleep! 
Anon the constellations tower o'er us: 
Great Nature, in primeval mood and deep. 
Restores our love, even as she will restore us 
Our light — exultant on her mountain steep! 



[37] 



With Mother Earth 

^^TT^IS well to spend a lucid afternoon 

Ja- In the long silvery grass, with upturned eye 
Noting the leaves that fret the azure sky ; 

'Tis well to wait the coming of the moon, 
Out on the hillside, over fields of June. 

'Tis well to listen, when abed we lie, 
To midnight murmurs of the rain and try 
To mark therein the world's primeval tune. 

'Tis well to know, that (spite of death and dearth 

And evil men in cities plotting ill 

And friends that leave us when our thoughts are new) 

The good man may abide with Mother Earth 
And dream his dreams and have his visions still 
And trust the Infinite to see him through. 



[38] 



Behind the Old House 

{Among the Hills.) 

BEHIND the old house beds of lettuce grow; 
The winds across the dancing red-top blow ; 
The brook is bright with blue forget-me-nots 
As when we gathered long, long years ago. 

Behind the old house on a trellis nod 
The sweetpease (purple o'er the goldenrod), 
Whose incense, like an unseen beauty, fills 
The upland morning and the fields of God. 

Behind the old house, down the narrow lane, 
After long years the mountain sun again ! 
After long years the wide primeval dawn, 
Gold o'er the white mists of the midland plain! 

And how those years of sorrow glorify 

The fresh, free, olden things of earth and sky! 



[39] 



Games 

A BOY I mastered exercise and game: 
I threw the discus, and I drove the ball; 
I ran the course, I cleared the hurdles all; 
At boxing swift in parry, lunge, and aim; 
A wrestler, fencer, turner; with a frame 
To skate in moonlight down the river where, 
On summer noondays, diving bronze and bare, 
I swam the bend for joy and not for fame. 

And these, with mastery of plane and saw, 
Judged as traditions of wise years behind. 
No less than legend, language, art, and law — 
I mean as wisdom of our human kind — 
I hold, with something of historic awe, 
Among the assets of a noble mind. 



[40] 



The Wildman 

BUT still the wildman calls the tameless boy; 
Primeval instincts of the cave and tree, 
The summons of the years that used to be, 
Ages before Achilles fought at Troy, 
Calls him abroad to his ancestral joy 
With spear and belt and arrow ; and he stands 
Out on the rocks, and peers with lifted hands 
For wolf to flee or wigwam to destroy. 

Thus, when I mark in our museums a lance, 

A feathered stick, a twisted curio, 

I think with pride in my omnipotence: 

" I made these things ten thousand years ago, 

Where the sun set on plains that now are France, 

Upon my ways from Pyrenees to Po." 



[41] 



Primordial Earth 
I. 

I SEE that only ocean isle forlorn, 
First shape, except the massy cloud at noon, 
Or rolling wave against the rim of morn, 
To cast a bulk of shadow. Gull nor loon 
Clings to its riven cliff and scarped wall. 
Nor splashing wrack of tangled kelp : the sea. 
Mother of life to all, 
Not yet will yield of her fecundity, 
Even as her breath 

Hath yet no odor of salt nor eery voice of death. 
But ineradicably strong, 
That Island, first of islands in all zones, 
Divideth the immeasurable main; 
The whirling cones 
Of writhen water columns, far along 
The highways of the lightning, strike in vain. 
And under thunderheads of dying storm, 
It standeth bulwarked, bleak, deform, 
In ocean glow of setting sun 
Or midnight silver of the gibbous moon — 
The dry land hath begun ; 
The rest shall follow late or soon. 



[42] 



Primordial Earth 

II. 

I see the elder swamps of time; 

The Reptiles fold the air beneath their wings 

Athwart the sky, or drop into the slime 

With slapping fin and tumbling back. 

One dives, and, crossing through the water rings, 

A zigzag line of bubbles lets me track 

His sullen, deep meanderings; 

One wallows up the oozy shore, 

Crunching a speckled eel ; one with a claw 

Tears open the fiery bulb of some vast flower; 

One licks the poison-pith with tongue and jaw 

From a rent stalk of fern, 

And with a lurch and turn, 

Bulges a green round eye at me. 

And through the sultry fogs and noxious fumes 

The sun's blurred outline somewhere looms, 

Nor doth it yet appear what is to be, 

III. 

Down a long wood I peer — 

There is the Simian band. 

Some swing by clasping tail and reaching hand 

Among the trees, 

With chatter and quick yelp. 

Some scurry along on toes and knuckles or rear 

Abrupt. One flings, with labored grunt and wheeze, 

[43] 



Primordial Earth 

A thigh-bone at a fleeing whelp. 

One squatting near a fungus madly scratches 

A beetle from his arm-pit, muttering. 

Hardby, upon the mossy patches, 

Half stretched, half curled, 

One sleeps and makes of sleep a hideous thing. 

Who will unriddle why I laugh at this? 

Or why, across the Infinite abyss, 

The white stars beacon the Insensate world? 

IV. 

I see a ledge along a mountain side. 

The platform of a cavern dwelling place; 

And one comes out who has a bearded face, 

A pelt on thigh, a club In fist. 

And stripes of ochre round his arm and wrist, 

With curious artistry applied. 

And now he piles the leaves and bark, 

And plies a stick and rubs a spark, 

And blows upon the smolder; 

Then stands, while mounts the smoke above his 

shoulder. 
And gazes down the valley In the wide 
Dawn of this autumn of the old stone age 
At the sun rising out along the mist, 
And, like a sovereign priest or mage, 
Calls from beside the sacrificial flame 
On the great sun by name. 

[44] 



Primordial Earth 

V. 

And in that lifted face, 

Wherein I still may trace 

In less the dusky forms uncouth and grim 

Of antique nature's seeming whim — 

The crag, the bulb, the saurian, the ape — 

I see the Olympians taking shape: 

The brow of Zeus who gives commands, 

Poseidon who is lord of ships, 

Ares who arms the walls for war, 

Apollo with the singing lips, 

And Dionysos, looser of the lands 

By city, stream, or shore. 

And the vast Issues of a coming race 

Crowd half their portent In that savage face. 



[4S5 



The Ancient Mariner 

AGES ago I ranged the outer seas, 
The shimmering main that moves below the moon, 
The shoreless waters of the vaulted noon, 
The drizzling oceans winter could not freeze; 
With halyards twisted by the Genoese, 
And sails of linen from the docks of Tyre, 
I bounded onward: for the western fire 
Beaconed between the Gates of Hercules. 

While yesterday, with hundred flags unfurled 

By all the nations, dwelling either side, 

I swept from Azores round the Horn to Spain, 

And left behind me, circling all the world. 

As aery offspring of my speed and pride. 

The long smoke winnowed by the sun and rain. 



[46] 



The Steamer 

THE steamer plows the middle sea 
With smoke behind and foam before; 
And through whatever nights there be 
She anchors not from shore to shore : 

Though head winds smite her onward form, 
And waves from east to west be hurled, 
Though ocean stars be hid in storm 
Beyond the glimpses of the world. 

Her needle tells the unseen path, 
Eternal law to her desire; 
And her unconquered speed she hath 
In quenchless heart of flame and fire. 



[471 



Coastwise 

{North Shore.) 

ALL night, fog-bound in murky seas we rode 
Off perilous capes and nameless coasts of dread, 
Our vague lights seeking, like dim ghosts in red. 
The pallid regions round our dusk abode; 
The moonless tides beneath us ebbed and flowed; 
And unseen ships that bolder steered ahead 
Shrieked weird and far, like voices of the dead, 
And all night long we answered where we rode. 

But with the morn the sun came vast and round. 
And winds came golden o'er the wide blue sea, 
And, weighing anchor in a world of light, 
We scudded down the main and made the sound 
And marked the port, our city of the free, 
Low on the purple sky, secure and bright. 



[48] 



The Wreck 

I KNOW where clings among the rocks and kelp, 
And shelvy sands that boil at ebbing tide, 
Far from the folk on whom she called for help, 
Far from the fog-swept lighthouse yellow-eyed, 
A battered steamer on her iron side, 
With stacks inclining to the setting sun, 
Like rusty cannon whose last booming died 
On some abandoned fortress: she is one 
With all on land or sea whose mighty works are done. 



[49] 



The Express 



SHE comes! I hear her whistle mount the air 
High o'er the howling storm, and down the black 
Gulf of the station, where the level track 
Shoots Into night, I see her headlight flare! 
The swaying bell rings out its wild beware, 
The long, low smoke Is trailing from her stack, 
The chill draught strikes — the crowd Is pressing back, 
She comes, she stops — how terrible and fair! 

Would mine her swift night in the windy gorge, 
O'er trestles shaken with a mountain roar, 
O'er snow-swept plain, by factory and forge, 
By lights of cities on the Inland shore, 
And island beacons ! — O would mine her hour 
Of large experience and splendid power! 



[50] 



Ultima Thule 

{For Commander Peary.) 

IT was not for the Arctic gold and a claim at the end 
of the great white trail; 
Nor yet for the Arctic lore — for a map of the floe 

and a graph of the gale: 
But the quest came out of a primitive urge in the 

blood of our common birth — 
The lure of the last lone verge and the desert end of 
the rolling earth. 

For this he abandoned the green of the world — the 

lakes and the hills and the leas, 
And rivers of midsummer nations, and banks with the 

corn and the vine and the trees, 
And the genial zones of the planet's rains, and the belt 

of the planet's flowers; 
For this he abandoned all cities — their households, 

their singing and sunsets and towers. 

Onward, north of the Northern Lights, hungry and 

cold and alone, 
Eternity under his frozen feet and the snows of the 

ages unknown, 
With never the boom of the purple seas, nor ever a 

mountain of fire. 
North of the Plain of the thousand slain — who were 

dead of the same desire ! — 

[51] 



Ultima Thule 

Till the East and West were lost in the South, and the 

North was no more, and he stood 
Face to face with the ancient dream through his hope 

and his hardihood; 
And the alien skies where the polar sun went round the 

horizon's rim 
And the nameless ice below belonged at last to the 

race through him. 



[53] 



Prayer to the Man-bird 

OMAN-BIRD, fierce and far, so long foretold 
By wandering prophets of the strange and new, 
O man-bird whom the nations now behold 
Rounding the cloud and heading down the blue, 
Where the world's fowl on their migrations flew 
In ancient autumns, O Man, or Bird, or Thing, 
Beating the foamless air with silvtr screw, 
Swift on the wonder of thy linen wing, 
Headless, yet with a brain to dare and do, 
O hear, O help us in our auguring! 

O thou who seemest to our solemn ken 
The last great victor over time and space 
And all the primal enemies of men. 
With whom they battle for their dwelling place — 
Victor, indeed, who meetest face to face 
Winds and all thunder, and laughest at the sea, 
The waves and waterspouts, and o'er the base 
Of fire and flood and earthquake ridest free, 
Free too o'er foul contagions of the race. 
Pity the multitudes whose dread is thee! 

Thou for whose larger vision lies the lap 

Of earth outspread in glittering brown and green — 

One whole, in clear proportions, like a map — 

With mountain-range and forest and ravine, 

And pasture-land and tilth, and narrow sheen 

Of watercourse and highway far and near, 

[53] 



Prayer to the Man-Bird 

And cities and men who run about between, 
And ships by cape and isle, O Eye and Seer — 
If but thou knowest what these things may mean 
The congregations of the people hear! 

Thou, the wild loosener of the law that bound 
Our restless feet in journeys left and right 
For sullen ages so close against the ground, 
Terrible spirit, buoyant on the Bright, 
Only achiever of liberty and light. 
Floating in sunset with the evening star, 
Like some dread symbol of the soul's delight, 
Thou, of man's Hope the awful avatar. 
Alert to outspeed the coming of the night, 
O hear the nations, hear us as we are! 

Hear us and be to us the good we name! 
Be not that curse whose shadow flies with thee ! 
Be not the demon of the sword and flame ! 
For as the air is more than land and sea, 
So would the havoc and the horror be. 
Scatter not blood in God's high atmosphere, 
Unsullied and silent from eternity. 
To drench the fields whose corn is in the ear 
After old wars . . . lest we forever flee 
The House of Peace that we are building here. 



[54] 



Upland Lights 

{Mount Aery.) 

HASTE, courtier, from ancestral halls, 
Where hang the shields of ancient knights; 
Haste, ere the snow on Aery falls, 
And come to us at Upland Lights. 

The pines lie thick atop the hill. 
And by their margin on the slope, 
Where old world-winds are blowing still, 
We've built to west our house of hope. 

Haste, courtier, up the greenwood trail. 
When moons are full and cool the nights; 
And sleep with us while sink the pale 
Autumnal stars o'er Upland Lights. 

Then rouse with us, carouse with us 
At morn in spiritual mirth. 
While the gray mists diaphanous 
Half hide and half reveal the earth. 

For over them, as o'er calm seas. 
The sun shall strike ; and as they break, 
We mark the nearer rocks and trees, 
And then the valley, then the lake, 

[ss] 



Upland Lights 

And then far off the mountain chain, 
So blue against the long blue sky; 
And, like ship's watchmen on the main, 
We drink the world with open eye. 

And, courtier, if thou ailing be 
With secret grudge or silent woe, 
Wait through our afternoon, and see 
At Upland Lights the afterglow; 

See o'er those violet peaks the belts 

Of lilac, lavender, and green, 

How each to other softly melts, 

Or fades with crimson streaks between; 

See, tier o'er tier, the gold clouds strew 
Their vast and flaming arc above. 
While just beneath, in skies still blue, 
A white star shines, the star of love. 

And if the king decree a march, 

A siege, or silver tribute-fee, 

A pageant or triumphal arch. 

What matters ? — let the king decree. 



[56] 



The Ruined House 

COME, come away ! — 
White was this house of ours, 
Vanished to-day; 
Warm in the shrubs and flowers, 
Radiant in rainbow showers, 
Facing the sunset's towers, 
Golden as they. 

House of desire ! — 
Born that there poets might 

Sleep and aspire! 
Fragrant in full-moon light. 
Rustling her vines by night. 
Watching the comet's bright 

Midsummer iire! 

Let us be gone! 
Foully her rafters smolder 

In the gray dawn; 
And the black chimney shoulder, 
Lone as the mountain bowlder, 
Stands, while the winter's colder 

Winds come on. 



[57] 



To an Elf 

{Edith C .) 

YOU elfin creature of these underwoods, 
Poised in a plat of moonlight on ethereal 
Pinions, beside my secret mountain-spring, 
Upon a rock, akimbo and imperial. 
You little Mischief, pert as any king, 
Are you some insect-spirit of the floods. 
Or is your quaint diaphanous material 
Some eery distillation of the mist, 
Or braid of tickling gossamers atwist? 
And can you weep or tell me anything? 



[58I 



The Scarlet Skater 

{Epilogue for the Winter of igoS-g, Madison.) 

OCITY of the inland domes along the Winter's 
track, 
Whose hills were white by day and night o'er lakes 
of Arctic fire, 
Where the blue air drove your ice-boats out beside 
the bluffs and back, 
'Twas there among your skaters that I found my 
heart's desire — 

The tasseled head, the cloak of red. 
The swiftest of your skaters with the feet that 
never tire! 

Hands across we whirled away — away from all the 
rest 
At set of sun, through silent wastes, and paths of 
orange fire. 
Onward to the purple coves and woods below the west, 
Where the rumbling ice was greener and the world- 
end winds were higher — 

Round tasseled cap and scarlet wrap, 
The fleetest of your skaters with the stroke that 
would not tire. 

With hands still fast, unharmed, at last around, around 
we bore. 
At moon rise through the tv^alight, down a strip of 
lunar fire, 

tS9] 



The Scarlet Skater 

Orion floating up the south, where summer nights be- 
fore, 
Fd seen from out my light canoe the coming of the 
Lyre — 

From light canoe, ere yet I flew 
With her, the scarlet skater with the starlight 
streaming by her. 

O City of the inland domes beneath the polar star 

(Gold light, silver light, bells in the spire), 
Where the blue air drove your ice-boats out along the 
bluffs afar, 
*Twas there among your daughters that I found my 
soul's desire — 

The flaming wings, the thrill of things. 
The Spirit of the Far and Wide whose feet can 
never tire. 



[60] 



The Scholar's Return 



R 



OBINj give another chirp in the apple tree! 
Robin, come and pull a worm and cock your head 
at me I 



After all the weary quest up and down the lands — 
Castles on the green hills, sphinxes in the sands, 
Cities by the river-lights, bridges far away, — 
Here again and home again, nevermore to roam again, 
Here again to-day! 

After all the pedant zest in among the books — 
Parchments old and red and gold in monastic nooks, 
Hie and hoc and langedoc, Caxtons, Elzevirs, — 
Here again and back again, nevermore to pack again. 
After years and years! 

After playing connoisseur at a painted wall — 
Pea-green damsel, purple mamsell, king and seneschal, 
Saintly soul and aureole, ruin and morass, — 
Here with eyes to see again the haycock down the lea 

again, 
Lounging in the grass! 

Robin, give another chirp in the apple tree! 
Robin, come and pull a worm and cock your head 
at me! 



[6i] 



III. The Issues of Life 



Out From God's House 

NEW dawns shall come, but I shall read the mass 
No more, nor face Thy cross, O Christ, nor ring 
The silver bell, nor golden censer swing 
Down fuming aisles, God's angel as I pass. 
Between the high saints in cathedral glass, 
No more, nor never mellow Aves sing 
At twilight, when the weary people bring 
The long day's burden through the gates of brass 

To Mary Mother. 

Ah, new dawns shall come, 
New eves shall follow ; but it is my grief 
Of dawns, of eves, to have attained the sum 
In love and vision : in mine unbelief 
I leave God's house, like Zacharias, dumb. 
Nor hold, as he, God's promise of relief. 



[6s] 



A Psalm of the Prayerless 

THE Christ of Creeds has lost his fame, 
His bells are silent on the mount, 
No candles on the altar flame, 
And empty the baptismal fount ; 
The wine we drank was moldered must, 
The blessed wafer but a crust. 

Thou, too, fair Face, beyond all creeds, 
Art sunk In ocean like a wraith, 
A shadow cast by human needs. 
Lost when we lost the light of faith — 
The " Father " of this peopled shore 
Becomes but Idle metaphor. 

Whilst that grim Somewhat of the mind, 
The primal Cause, the cosmic One, 
Though throned forever there behind, 
Gleams colder than the polar sun, 
To w^hom, across the eternal ice, 
Man never burned a sacrifice. 

And yet we plant and store our shelves. 
And kiss the young and lead the old, 
And die for dreams we dreamed ourselves, 
Because the Laws within us hold; 
And, closely read, those Laws Immerse 
Our being In the Universe. 

[66] 



Epilogue 

{To a privately printed collection of verses.) 

I SANG (remembering how the free winds blow) 
Mount, sea, and fire, and earth's refulgent days, 
Vernal horizons and autumnal haze, 
And moonlit cities in the midnight snow. 
And found (mid griefs that met me on my ways) 
Joy in the passion, pageantry, and show. 

I sang (remembering how the stars abide) 
Strong hands, and feet, and eyes uplifted still. 
Resurgent hope, indomitable w^ill, 
And man who liveth, when his gods have died, 
And found in singing (whatsoe'er my skill) 
Joy in the grandeur of his strength and pride. 

But the World-Spirit of the East and West, 

That shapes the Seen and guides Life's ebb and flow, 

The Loving-Kindness, named so long ago, 

The everlasting Arms, the Mother-breast, 

I scarce have known and I may never know — 

And after joy, I crave the gift of rest. 



[67] 



The Rose 

SILESIUS wrote: " The rose has never a why," 
Chiding man's questionings; and as I read, 
Visions of quiet summer and blue sky, 
And odorous blooms in gardens of the dead, 
And shadows of their low leaves dancing by 
On path or grass-plot, with the sunlight shed 
Between, came gently to the inward eye, 
And half in tears and half in joy I said: 

" The rose may weep not when its sisters die. 
Its being beauty, and beauty has no * why,' 
Else more than beauty, else a hope, a dream — 
We, as the issue of a law more high. 
Go up to Delphi where the eagles fly, 
Or raise the columns of an Academe." 



[68] 



Pain and Speech 

PAIN drove me from the music and the hall, 
Far from the city and the golden truth, 
In starless midnights of a blasted youth, 
Out to the iron hills, beyond recall. 
Where in lone speech I sought to burst my thrall. 
Then to return with records, holding sooth 
And song and art for men; but fang and tooth 
Bit at my throat and choked my lungs with gall 

And flame yet more. — 

O art is to the free! 
When pain is torn, like viper, from the breast. 
Its head in dust beneath the heel, and we 
Know it can nevermore uplift its crest — 
Then, and then only, may we masters be, 
Telling experience to East and West. 



[69] 



The Law with Life for Gloss 

CHRIST, wilt thou stand once more and gloss the 
Law? 
If wage of ill be death and wage of good 
Were surely life, O Rabbi, Master, could 
My soul have reaped this harvest, chaff and straw, 
And burning thistle, that had sowed with awe 
In God's own sun, for love and livelihood — 
Still trusting thee, O Christ, not understood — 
A field as fair as husband ever saw? 

But Christ : " Man's faith when man goes out to sow, 
Even as man's grief when man comes back to reap. 
Are more than seed or harvest — let them go. 
Thy soul's experience as new winters sweep 
New summers from the hills, at last shall know 
To gloss the Law — for lo, the Law is deep." 



[70] 



Compensation 

I KNOW the sorrows of the last abyss: 
I walked the cold black pools without a star ; 
I lay on rock of unseen flint and spar; 
I heard the execrable serpent hiss; 
I dreamed of sun, fruit-tree, and virgin's kiss; 
I woke alone with midnight near and far, 
And everlasting hunger, keen to mar; 
But I arose, and my reward is this: 

I am no more one more amid the throng: 
Though name be naught, and lips forever weak, 
I seem to know at last of mighty song; 
And with no blush, no tremor on the cheek, 
I do claim consort with the great and strong 
Who suffered ill and had the gift to speak. 



[71] 



Threefold Life 

OUR life Is threefold : toll for daily bread, 
A little vintage and a little oil, ■ 
Consumes the middle day; and after toil. 
When golden sunlight (else for joyance shed) 
Once more behind the hill or holt is sped, 
Then sleep must take us from the stars and foil 
The joyance of the splendor-night and coil 
Around us dreary shades or dreams of dread; 

But in the space between our toil and sleep, 
An hour at level dawn, at eve an hour, 
A sacred watch we keep, or ought to keep: 
Then stands the soul at peace as In a tower. 
And hears the world's eternal music sweep, 
^ And knows its heritage of light and power. 



[72] 



Wanderers 

WHAT makes us wander? The west wind's call 
and cry- 
When frost is on the stubble? The harvest moon 
Crowning the hill-road? The diffused noon 
Of summer and reaches of the unruffled sky? 
Sunset? Or sea? Or rivers gliding by 
Around the bluffs? Or snow against the face? 
Or some dim sense of earth itself in space, 
When at the spring the wild geese northward fly? 

Is it in the blood? — impulse of veined feet 
And sinewy thighs that wither if they rest? 
Is it in the soul ? — to w^hom the Incomplete 
Is challenge to the immemorial quest, 
The soul that leaves To-day in winding sheet 
For some To-morrow with stars upon its breast. 



[73] 



Fragment 

AND I am gone among the mighty dead, 
And Vergil brings me myrtle for my head, 
And Shelley leads me to the central fire; 

But up and down the earth by moor and main 
The evening scatters in the rust and rain 
The unplucked roses of the dawn's desire. 



[74] 



Love Afar 

I DARE not look, O Love, on thy dear grace, 
On thine immortal eyes, nor hear thy song. 
For O too sore I need thee and too long, 
Too weak as yet to meet thee face to face. 
Thy light would blind — for dark my dwelling 

place — 
Thy voice would wake old thoughts of right and 

wrong, 
And hopes which sleep, once beautiful and strong. 
That would unman me with a dread disgrace : 

Therefore, O Love, be as the evening star. 
With amber light of land and sea between, 
A high and gentle influence from afar. 
Persuading from the common and the mean. 
Still as the moon when full tides cross the bar 
In the wide splendor of a night serene. 



[75] 



II Ben deir Intelletto 

ONE evening wrought upon by loneliness 
And brooding over many things that were — 
My mountains and the hermit thrush and her 
And years since then in cities of distress — 
I visited In quest of mirthfulness 
In crystal parlors, where on tiger skin 
Stood with her white arm on her violin 
A lady ever radiant to bless. . , . 

But in the starlight on my still return: 

" Though in my chamber but a taper burn, 

Yet there the deathless music of the dead — 

Not thus," I thought, " my good I find, not thus, 

Who saw the Titan bound by i^sch}dus 

And touched the iron crown on Dante's head." 



[76] 



When Death Shall Come 

WHEN death shall come (in spite of heart aflame 
And wished-for morrows and new steps ahead 
On toward the rivers and the morning-red), 
And I shall lie the shattered fool of fame, 
Draw not the curtain down the casement frame 
Past the dear trees ; and let no prayer be said, 
Nor holy wine be brought nor holy bread 
To rob the pagan of his light and name. 

But get me balsam where the west wind stirr'th 

And lay in odorous linen at my cheek, 

That I may enter to the great Unknown 

With old familiar memories of earth. 

Of forest, brook, and bird, and mountain peak 

And the blue sky around them, zone o'er zone ! 



\.77l 



Success 

THE people have imagined a vain thing, 
Touching the old issues that are life: Success 
Will still be reckoned in the more or less 
Of riches, lands, or station ; still we bring 
Our homage to those paltry gods who fling 
These paltrier favors round — to Custom, Dress, 
To Etiquette, Discretion, Cleverness — 
And still would smile if once more one should sing: 

" Success is character, as riches are 

In knowledge which no fire nor fraud can take; 

The good man, conscious of the morning star, 

Shall own all lands, as lovely for his sake; 

His station is with counselors afar. 

Who for eternal justice work and wake." 



[78] 



Xat/3£ $a)s! 

SO, one by one, the inexorable years 
Have taught how slow my feet, how far the sun 
Thy streams are wide, O world ; thy clouds are dun ; 
Thy mountains shadowy with the gulfs of fears. 
Where hangs the unfelled pine; thy dry wind seres; 
And reptiles foul thy pleasant springs that run; 
Yet though I die before the light be won, 
That light more dim to me at last for tears, 

O let it be on some supreme far height, 
Facing some westward ocean, blue below. 
With might to lean upon the verge — with might 
To lift the arm and point that they may know, 
Who seek me dying, I die unto the light, 
And leave me dead in sunset lying so ! 



[79] 



Obscurity 

MY aims have brought me neither deed nor praise, 
For they were bastards of unproved desire, 
Got in unholy years to mock their sire 
With fatal loves and desperate delays. 
And thus for me no boisterous square shall blaze 
With festal nights and pageantry of fire ; 
For me shall sound from no cathedral choir 
The larger music of victorious days, 

For me, the meagre, thwarted — O my soul, 
Hast thou no tear? Nay, nay: there still abide 
The mountain air, the sunset and the roll 
Of thunder to the immemorial tide. 
And the deep self of me within the Whole 
Which, still by smiling, still is justified. 



[80] 



The Law Prevails 

THE Law prevails! When every silver gain, 
So proudly won from furious greed of lust, 
Lies with man's broken spirit in the dust, 
And earth's pure winds blow over him in vain, 
He sees in visions, born of utter pain. 
The Law anew — how beautiful and just — • 
And its profound, majestical '' Thou must " 
Sounds in his soul like thunder down the plain 

At twilight. 

And he turns, he looks, he lifts 
His empty hands, his pleading arms to heaven — 
Then roused anew, then on anew, he shifts 
His burden off and scorns to be forgiven — 
While manhood's pride, his soul's salvation still, 
Unto " Thou must '* makes answer bold : " I will! 



[8i] 



For a School of Artists 

HEAR me at last! I've read old books and new; 
I've housed with sages either side the ^ea; 
I've asked my soul when stars were over me; 
I've watched In cities men with work to do; 
I've been at Delphi when the eagle flew; 
I've wept alone In dark Gethsemane ; 
And now I know, whatever gods there be, 
Whatever temples rise, my guess was true : 

The Good Is good — and we shall tend the fire, 
The holy flame that burns behind the veil! 
And each design of ours and each desire 
That would deny the eternal Good shall fail — 
And art, that mocks that sunbrlght temple, must 
Lie soon or late a harlot In the dust 



[82] 



To the Victor 

MAN'S mind is larger than his brow of tears: 
This hour is not my all of Time ; this place 
My all of Earthf nor this obscene disgrace 
My all of Life; and thy complacent sneers 
Shall not pronounce my doom to my compeers 
Whilst the Hereafter lights me in the face, 
^And from the Past, as from the mountain's base, 
Rise, as I rise, the long tumultuous cheers. 

And who slays me must overcome a world: 
Heroes at arms, and virgins who became 
Mothers of children, prophecy and song; 
Walls of old cities with their flags unfurled; 
Peaks, headlands, ocean and its isles of fame — 
^ And sun and moon and all that made me strong. 



[83] 



The Vagabond 

AROUND the world I've been in many a guise, 
In cape, or furs, or oilskin, fronting Fate; 
Down rainy seas, through many a stormy strait, 
By upland forests, over hills that rise 
White, green, or crimson in the season skies; 
Through civic arch and eagle-crested gate, 
Imperial boulevards and halls of state; 
And asked for Fame — and failed of every prize. . . 

Except, except the experienced eye and free, 
And these impregnable old sides of mirth; 
Except, except a glorious wisdom, worth 
All the poor scorn these tatters bring to me: 
Some feeling for the massy bulk of earth, 
Some still monitions of mortality. 



[84] 



Mens Immortalis 

I AM the Lord of Heaven and Hell ; I reign 
King from the blue void to dim gulfs below; 
My counselors were gathered long ago 
From conquered hosts of pleasure and of pain. 
And when at sanction of their suzerain 
They speak the wisdom only they can know, 
My just decrees work thrift or overthrow 
Throughout my old and eminent domain. 

I plant the mountain where I laid the plain, 
Create the seas and suns of afterglow, 
Call the great thunder and the wild, slant rain, 
And rear me shrines for worship or for show — 
Destroying all, when, for my growth and gain, 
I wish new worlds to rise, new winds to blow. 



[85] 



The Poet in the City 

THE mornings sweep with gust and snow 
Round tower and bridge and sordid halls, 
And cold the yellow evenings glow 
Behind the city's somber walls. 

And day by day, with dreams unsaid, 
And fiery hope that will not die, 
We toil anew for daily bread, 
My still unconquered soul and I. 

Our sunbright peaks are lost ; we see 
No more the midland rivers flow; 
The echoes of our mountain glee 
Became a memory long ago. 

For us no more the good ship lifts 
Its bounding prows in midsea day; 
Its smoke on blue horizons drifts, 
Somewhere in ocean far away. 

But the swift songs we may not sing 
(That comrade scarce would mark If sung)',! 
Like winds of an eternal spring 
Still sound for us and keep us young. 

And still we boast our mountain birth, 
Our hardy nurture on the sea, 
Which give us, as the lords of earth. 
The strength to labor and be free. 
[86] 



Vigil 

WHEN austere hunger, the stern lord of all, 
Shut me from day, the mountainous and free, 
To sell for bread my golden liberty, 
In her chief city her obscurest thrall, 
I turned to night, deep night primordial; 
On the bleak housetop I went up to see, 
And in my desolation came to me 
The starry vision of the flaming wall. 

By chastening sorrow rendered fit and wise, 

My utter dearth gave me immortal eyes. 

And when night broke the day's blue dome, I passed 

Coeval, outward where eternity 

Fills her long coasts with winds than ours more vast 

And radiance whiter than the polar sea. 



[87] 



For a Drudger 



4 



I '"T^HOU shalt win victory from this dull routine 
A And crown thy head with laurel when 'tis won; 
This sure restraint thy youth was fain to shun 

rWill put new manhood in thy step and mien, 
And in thy words, that something strong and keen 
Which comes of life when life has bravely done — 
Nor wilt thou all forget the mountain sun, 
Nor the wild Alps with winds and snows between. 

Thou shalt win life : for thou shalt learn with awe 
^^How life is passion, but passion self-controlled, 
tThat flames, even as the stars, by ancient law, — 
Even as the stars that flame o'er field and fold, 
Beyond earth's nether coasts of gust and flaw, 
(Bright, beautiful, unalterable and old. 



[88] 



With the Age 

FOR good or ill, I master thy desire, 
O age and country, making thy life mine; 
I fell the forest and I lay the line; 
I guide the cranes that swing the steel from fire 
And flaring blast; I ride the inland flyer 
Through the sown fields ; in earth's vast rain and shine 
I coast the sea with many a bold design, 
And visit cities, climbing tower and spire, 

And look abroad and say: " How strong ye are! 

How ominous and wide! What new-born will 

Is housed among ye, cities near and far 

By cape and river and the changeless hill! 

How large your dreams, when 'neath the polar star, 

The winter night lies round ye, cold and still." 



[89] 



The Muse 

SPIRIT, whom seer and singer name the Muse, 
Be with me, radiant with thy peace and power, 
When rocks are foaming and the main seas lower, 
Or mountain sunsets widen with all hues; 
Be with me when I wake in upland dews, 
And when I walk In city dust or shower. 
And when I love In hall or watch In tower; 
Be with me when I win and when I lose ! 

Thou shalt be with me! The decree Is mine! 
And mine dominion and the primal will! 
Though called no longer from Parnassus hill, 
Thou shalt be with me and no less divine — 
The immanent Vigilance, creating still 
The nobler nature, the more bold design. 



[90] 



The World and the Soul 

THE starry clouds about the world are blown, 
And rain-fresh suns rise over mount and mead ; 
The slant pine sways in black crevasse; the weed 
Swings its green locks in ocean on a stone; 
The herds are on the hills; kings on the throne; 
White cities rear their gates for show or need 
And sing of heroes — and behold ! a seed 
Here on the coast of time, my soul is sown. 

Yet lo ! a world within its obscure cell — 
Light, darkness, storms, shapes demon and divine, 
The inward visions out of Heaven and Hell — 
And choice to make the one or other mine! 
Hold fast, my soul, hold fast and all is well! 
Master thine own and every world Is thine! 



[91] 



The Good Cause 

ROUND the old house where lilacs bloomed and 
died, 
Armed with the mimic bow my father gave, 
A boy I marched and dreamed of coast and cave 
And bears descending from the mountain side; 
Or down dusk vistas of the arbor, wide, 
And cool with scent of grapes, I sped to save 
Fair ladies lost in woods, for I was brave 
And sought adventure equal to my pride. 

That house is down; the high hour never came; 
The boy remembered but in tale or jest, 
Yet the good cause, O Life, is still the same; 
I see the days, the scope, of East and West; 
The shapes I see are of heroic name — 
Scorn, poverty, disease — and this is best. 



[93] 



Not an Academician 

YOUR courts and carven porticos excel, 
Ye've set the busts and bound the books of fame, 
Ye've taught me many a date and many a name 
Of Heaven and Earth and seven pits of Hell; 
And, planning once for long with ye to dv^^ell, 
I bought me purple robes and tried the same, 
But ever on the midnight rose a flame — 
O friends of austere memory, f areu^ell ! 

No, no ! persuade not : " Thou shalt trust the day, 
The marble order, the preciser creed, 
Thou shalt acknowledge law and bate the fire ; " 
For I must answer: "There is one only way — 
The night revealed it — though I fall and bleed, 
God help me, I will trust the heart's desire.'* 



[93] 



The Phantom Skater 

THE moon has burst the winter cloud, 
And silvers o'er the frozen reeds, 
And up the forest stream, a bowed 
And solitary skater speeds. 

His scarf floats o'er his bended back. 
His curved blades shimmer in the night; 
He hears the rumbling ice-field crack, 
With stroke to left, with stroke to right. 

The wild wind whirls from leaf and limb 

The dry snow out across his path; 

In wild ravines afar and dim 

The wolves of famine howl in wrath. 

I know not where he closed the door. 
Nor whither bound, nor what the clime; 
But on he glides forevermore, 
A skater of the olden time: 

They say he craves no earthly bread, 
They say he cannot fear nor tire. 
They say that he is spirit-fed. 
And name him Phantom, Hope, Desire. 



[94] 



I Feel Me Near to Some High Thing 

I FEEL me near to some High Thing 
That earth awaits from me, 
But cannot find in all my journeying 
What it may be. 

I get no hint from hall or street, 
From forest, hill, or plain. 
Save now a sudden quickening of my feet, 
Now some wild pain. 

I only feel it should be done, 

As Something great and true. 

And that my hands could build it in the sun, 

If I but knew. 



[95] 



The Test 

STILL at the wheel to labor down the sea 
With battered funnels and with riven flags, 
To overcome the mountains on bare crags 
Above the thunder and the farthest tree, 
To face a flaring city — the mad glee 
And ululations of her' reeling masques 
And human drift — are self-sustaining tasks, 
Because they challenge by their majesty. 

But in these swamps behind the hovel yard 
To make my obscene way through stench and flies 
And oozy fibers, and refuse glass and shard, 
And still to keep some token in my eyes 
Of inward dignity and God's good skies. 
This, this is manhood, this is truly hard. 



[96] 



The Crisis 

THIS solemn hour God takes from out all Time — 
Time that built up the mountains and the main, 
And brought embattled empires down the plain, 
And raised the cities seen in every clime — 
This solemn hour God takes from out all Time, 
Though Time with mightier Issues pregnant be 
Forevermore, and gives this hour to me. 
Wherein to prove my manhood at the prime. 

And I walk on, even to the martial voice 

Of strong musicians that have faced the foe; 

And with me stars and troops of angels go. 

And God is watching, ready to rejoice. . . . 

And I walk on ... to where the roads of Choice 

Are broad and narrow . . . shall I falter? ... No! 



[97] 



Prayer in the House of Pain 

OALL-AND-ONE, whom once of old I knew 
As Thought and Power behind the world and 
through, 
When in the calm detachment of the schools 
I solved thy Name by reason and the rules: 
Now on thy highway in the House of Pain, 
O Long Forgot, I come to thee again. 

Thought and Power around us and above, 
Whom life must solve, if life would live, as Love, 
Though mocked by science and though dazed by grief, 

1 will believe — help thou mine unbelief! 



[98] 



IV. Love that Lost 



The Bitterest Hour 

THOU hast poured poison in my cup of gall! 
The mountain echo o'er the lake and lea, 
The mountain sunsets, flaming wild and free, 
The mountain stillness of the stars, the fall 
Of mountain waters, and the shadowy call 
Of mountain birds had blessed and haunted me, 
Blent with a mountain memory of thee. 
When bitter years had urged me far from all: 

O dear as inspiration! life and light. 
And olden love, and immemorial mood 
Were with me yet in sordid house and hall — 
Till, like the pest, dank-fingered in the night. 
Thy treachery fouled my soul's last livelihood, 
And poured the poison In my cup of gall. 



[lOl] 



The Jester 

(For M .; 

y^ I ^IS little here nor there to you 

A Or me what now I say. 
But just another rhyme or two 
To pass the time of day. 
You like my rhymes, you say you do. 
They are so very gay.) 

I knew a fool who followed one 

Bright lady of the land. 

The lady smiled the fool upon, 

So regally and bland, 

And had him put his coxcomb on 

And sit and hold her hand. 

Then would she smile his rhymes to hear, 

And pet him and aver 

Her fool was twenty times as dear 

As other ladies' were. 

(And right was she, for all the year 

He rhymed to only her.) 

For all the year he'd rhyme and dream 
(O that's a fool his part), 
" My lady's fair as fair may seem 
And loves me without art," — 
Until the heart leapt up in him 
(A fool may have a heart!) 
[102] 



The Jester 

The lady marked his heart to leap 

And thought, " Of every jest 

That through my poor fool's brain can creep 

This is indeed the best," — 

(For let a fool but love and weep 

The w^hole fool stands confessed). 

The fool he told (ah, foolishly), 

His love he told so true; 

He scarce did see her shallow glee 

At what a fool could do; 

Till jested she, " Nay, fool, ah me, 

I am not worthy you." 

The fool he did not understand 
(His wits had little lore), 
The fool he could not understand 
(But ah, his heart was sore). 
He left the lady of the land 
And jested nevermore. 

The lady of the land did grieve 
For hours twenty- four; 
Another fool she did receive 
Long ere the next was o'er: 
For every lady, I believe, 
Must have one fool — or more. 



[103] 



The Jester 

{^Tis little here nor there to you 

Or me what now I say, 

'Twas but another rhyme or two 

To pass the time of day. 

You like my rhymes, you say you do. 

They are so very gay.) 



[104] 



A Voyage 



AS hunted as the veriest thief that flees 
I crossed the city of dead hope that day, 
With no farewells, and boarded at the quay 
The high red liner, headed for the seas. 
The brown smoke boiled from out her stack; the 

breeze 
Fluttered two flags ; the deck with folk was gay ; 
The whistle shrieked; the ropes were cast away, 
And forth she steamed. 

She passed the isles, the leas, 
The green hills, left and right. Behind at home 
The gray towers faded far. The setting sun 
Shot golden lines along our wake of foam; 
The ocean stars rose round us one by one. 
I took my berth to close my eyes and weep; 
I recked of nothing — I was on the deep. 



[los] 



Archilochus 

KNO W'ST thou this tale ? Archilochus, the Greek, 
High browed and dark, like his own cliffs and sea 
i^gean, had to bride Neobule, 
The fair and false, who spurned her poet, weak 
For love (poor fool!) — but he arose to wreak 
Vengeance which is his immortality; 
And his iambics, having scorn in fee 
And stings of truth, did like the vulture's beak 

Rend at her heart — until despair from guile 
And wantonness stripped off the spangled veil 
Of good repute; and all men knew her vile — 
And she did hang herself, she did. The gale 
Blew all her garments round the Parian isle, 
And none would gather them. Kjiow'st thou the 
tale? 



lio6] 



The Drachenfels 

OF old we housed us on the Hampshire hill, 
We plucked the rose, unwound the columbine 
From roadside birch, we planted woodland vine 
Around the door; we leapt the rock, the rill; 
We saw a hundred mountain suns all still 
And gold go down the sky ; with cheek on mine 
A hundred eves you sat beneath the pine 
And twilight moon to hear the whippoorwill 
With me of old. 

And now ! — deep seas divide, 
Deep seas and deeper hate. — The Rhine is fair 
Through mists of morning, and along its side 
The Drachenfels uplifts its ruin bare 
Before me; and I stand in sullen pride, 
And of your lot will neither know nor care. 



[107] 



The Image of Delight 

OHOW came I that loved stars, moon, and flame, 
And unimaginable wind and sea, 
All inner shrines and temples of the free, 
Legends and hopes and golden books of fame; 
I that upon the mountain carved my name 
With cliffs and clouds and eagles over me, 

how came I to stoop to loving thee — 

1 that had never stooped before to shame? 

*twas not thee! Too eager of a white 
Far beauty and a voice to answer mine, 
Myself I built an image of delight, 

Which all one purple day I deemed divine — 
And when it vanished in the fiery night, 

1 lost not thee, nor any shape of thine. 



[108] 



Postscript 



LOVE! and my soul like ashes at thy feet! 
Love! and blind tears and shattered hopes that 
fell! 
A mad forgiveness — and a wild farewell ! — 
And broken steps along an old-world street, 
The seas between us! — then the withering heat — 
The hate that, like a demon roused from hell, 
Smote into flame the splendor and the spell, 
Till thou to me wert ashes, Marguerite ! — 

Ah, I remember. — But when storms are done, 
The wet leaves sparkle on the mountain tree; 
The gold clouds lie about the setting sun; 
The blue waves roll their white crests In from sea; 
The gentle stars mount heaven one by one 
With ancient light, as now they mount to me. 



[109] 



Resolve 

THERE is an end. The fever and the pain, 
The craving unto life with that far hope 
Of mornings and of twilights, seen by two. 
Shall torture me no more. The nightly stars 
Beam downward and the sun and moon arise 
And pass o'er earth with all its snows and grass 
And towers and scattered graves, and seeds are blown 
And pestilence with winds, and there be tears 
For sorrow, smiles for joy. The Eternal Law 
Works in all regions, bringing light and dark. 
It works in me. It makes in me an end 
Even of the woe which it before had wrought, 
And leads me to the springs beyond the mount, 
Beyond all populous cities, where each man 
Must flee when all is lost, and in myself 
I find at last the rod which strikes the rocks 
Of living waters. 

I have garnered long 
O'er many lands, in many books. I own 
Old trees and castles, cataracts and heights, 
And orient cities dusk along the Nile, 
Old fountains, marbles, pictures, red and gold, 
From blue Valdarno, and old meters too 
From Scio, Delphi, Mantua down the South, 
From northern Weimar and the Avon stream, 
And folksongs of the Alp and Apennine 
And German rivers. Lo, I own the dream 
[no] 



Resolve 

Of Plato and the hardiness of Kant. 

I have all wealth within me; I will look. 

And I have that within me which shall build 
Everr from the fragments of dead hopes a house 
Where I may dwell as I grow more a god. 



[Ill] 



V. Men of High Report 



Lincoln 

{For the unveiling of the replica of Weinman's statue of 
Lincoln, University Hill, Madison, Wisconsin, June 22, iQog.) 



THERE runs a simple argument 
That, with the power to give a great man birth, 
The insight and the exaltation 
To judge him at his splendid worth 
Best proves the vigor of a continent. 
The blood that pulses in a nation. 

We call ourselves the militant and wise 

Heirs of dominion, lords of enterprise; 

And 'tis no craven faith whose works we name: 

The prairies sown, the factories aflame, 

The mountain mines, the battle-fleets that came 

Victorious home from islands of sunrise. 

The cities towering to the windy skies — 

A new-world faith that is a world's new fame! 

Yet we are wiser than we think we are. 

Nor walk we by that Iron faith alone: 

God and the west wind and the morning star 

And manhood still are more than steel or stone ! — 

And among the proofs of what we do inherit 

In the dominion of the spirit, 

Through that material uproar, toil, and strife 

[115] 



Lincoln 

Of our vast people's life, 
There is a story, eloquent and low, 
Waiting the consecrated scroll and pen, 
More lovely, more momentous than we dream: 
How, year by year, behind the blare and show, 
Lincoln has prospered in the hearts of men; 
And a great love compelleth to the theme. 

11. 

I stood among the watchers by the bed. 

And caught the solemn cry of Stanton, when, 

A statesman gifted with a prophet's ken, 

Stanton looked up to God and said. 

On the first moment the gaunt form lay dead, 

" Now he belongs unto the ages! " — then. 

Transfigured to a little child again, 

Bowed in his hands that grim, defiant head, 

III. 

I marked a people, hearing what had come. 
Whisper, as if Death housed in every street, 
And look in each others' faces and grow dumb; 
While, with the Stars and Stripes for winding sheet, 
And roses and lilies at his head and feet. 
He crossed the valleys to the muffled drum. 
And still the white-haired mothers tell 
How knell of bell and tolling bell, 
Onward and overland, 
[116] 



Lincoln 

On from the ocean strand, 

Over the misty ridges, 

Over the towns and bridges, 

Over the river ports, 

Over the farms and forts, 

Mingled their aery music, far and high, 

With April sunset and the evening sky. 

IV. 

Grief mellovi^ed into love at Time's eclipse. 

Our loftiest love from out our loftiest grief: 

From him we have named the mountains and the ships, 

We have named our children from the martyred chief ; 

And, whilst we write his works and words of state 

For the proud archives of the Country's great. 

How often It seems we like to linger best 

Around the little things he did or said. 

The quaint and kindly shift, the homespun jest, 

Dear random memories of a father dead; 

His Image Is In the cottage and the hall, 

A tattered print perhaps, a bronze relief, 

One calm and holy influence over all, 

A household god that guards an old Belief; 

And In a mood divine. 

Elder than Christian psalm or pagan rite, 

We have made his birthplace now the Nation's shrine, 

Fencing the hut that bore him In the night, 

[117] 



Lincoln 

As 'twere the mausoleum of a Line, 

With granite colonnades and walls forever white. 

V. 

And poets, walking in the open places, 

By marsh, or meadow, or Atlantic seas. 

Twined him with Nature in their harmonies — 

Folk-hero of the last among the races, 

As elemental as the rocks and trees; 

One of the world's old legendary faces. 

Moving amid Earth's unknown destinies. 

To Lowell he became like Plutarch's men, 

Yet worked in sweetest clay from out the breast 

Of the unexhausted West; 

In Whitman's nocturne at the twilight hush 

He seems a spirit come to dwell again 

With odor of lilac and star and hermit thrush; 

And, though the goodly hills of song grow dim 

B.eyond the smoke and traffic of to-day. 

The poets somehow found the ancient way 

And reached the summits when they sang of him, 

VL 

The sculptors dropped their measuring rods, 
Their cunning chisels from the gods, 
From woman in her marble nakedness, 
From what they carved of flowing veil or dress, 
Perceiving something they might not contemn, 
[ii8] 



Lincoln 

A majesty of unsolved loveliness, 

Standing between the eternal sun and them. 

And, in his gnarled face. 

With shaggy brow and bearded base. 

The corded hand, the length and reach of limb, 

Their generous handicraft 

Has proved how well they saw 

No antic Nature's curious sport or whim 

Who made him as she laughed, 

But strict adjustment after subtlest law — 

To finer sense a firm and ordered whole, 

An output of a soul, 

A frame, a visage for delight and awe, 

Even were It not also witness unto Time 

Of deeds sublime. 

Thus, true of eye and hand, 

The sculptors gave his statues to the land. 

VII. 

One stands in Boston's crowded square, 
Stern to rebuke and pitiful to save. 
One moment of his labors it stands there, 
And from its feet is rising up the slave; 
One by Chicago's noisy highway stands, 
As If pronouncing on a civic fate. 
Seeming to view a people's outstretched hands, 
Seeming to feel the armies at the gate. 

[119] 



Lincoln 

And now . . . and here . . , 

In the young summer of the hundredth year, 

So beautiful and still, 

The scholar (he who learns to wait 

For meanings than the rest more clear) 

Unveileth on the everlasting hill, 

With everlasting sky around Its head, 

Between the woodland inland waters, 

Fronting a domed city spread 

In yonder distance like a garden bed. 

This mighty Presence for our sons and daughters, 

That shows him not in what he wrought, 

But in the lonely grandeur of that trust 

Which made him patient, strong, and just — 

Yet seated, forever out of reach of ought 

Of olden battles and the dread debate, 

Whatever thunder comes or tempest blows; 

Watching some Planet off the shores of Thought, 

Not parted from but still above the state, 

In long supremacy of high repose. 



[120] 



Kaiser Wilhelm in Bonn 

THE Kaiser comes! and Rhineland's houses ring, 
And windows flutter with the Black-white-red, 
And Rhineland's sun is golden overhead, 
And Rhineland's hymn a thousand voices sing, 
As down the highway, where the white girls fling 
The flowers of Rhineland for her lord to tread. 
With hand on rein and helmet on the head, 
The Kaiser comes — and every inch a King! 

He knows the land of olden battles won; 
He hears a sound and he will not forget. 
And Rhineland's watch is still the true, the free; 
And in this faith his eye hath dared the sun, 
And his great heart, O Fatherland, hath set 
Its larger hope for all mankind in thee. 



[ 121 I 



Edgar Allan Poe 

{January ig, ^Qog.) 

NOT for the tales, where magic voices rave 
In wizard night through haunted houses drear, 
Till the spell makes me half in love with fear; 
Not for the weirder art, the rhymed stave 
Wailing of lunar wood, and wan sea-wave. 
And lamp, and ghostly bird, and bridal bier. 
Lay I these verses, at this hundredth year, 
Poe, on the marble of thy wintry grave ; 

But for the unconquerable soul that pain 
Nor poverty with forty stripes and odd. 
Fire in the throat, nor fever in the brain. 
Death in the house, nor calumny abroad. 
Could torture from a faith, not held In vain, 
With service unto Beauty — unto God. 



[ 122 ] 



Walt Whitman 

IN Washington in war-times, once I read, 
When down the street the good gray poet camc- 
A roving vagabond unknown to fame — 
From watches by the dying and the dead, 
The old slouch hat upon his shaggy head, 
His eyes aglow with earth's immortal flame, 
Lincoln, who marked him from the window frame, 
The judge of men, the deep-eyed Lincoln, said: 
*' That is a man." — 

What poet hath juster meed 
Whose brazen statue in the morning stands 
O'er marble avenues of elder lands? — 
In life, in death, that was a man indeed. — 
O ye who 'gainst him lift your righteous hands, 
And ye, the fops that ape his manhood, heed! 



[123] 



VI. America 



Remarks 

{On reading of the Intended sale of the White Mountains 
to a lumber company.) 

THE nations have rebuked us: " Greed for gold 
Costs ye voice, vision; costs ye faith and fame." 
Is this their envy? Shall we gloss our shame 
Writing it " Progress," " enterprise " ? Behold 
Our civic life a trade, our rich men old 
Bribing Opinion for an honest name, 
And art and letters counted jest or blame, 
When (but how seldom!) they will not be sold. 

Wc traffic with our birthright: our domain 
Of torrents thundering inland shall be dumb — 
We have sold our cataracts to turn our mills; 
And having lifted up our eyes in vain, 
Whence our help cometh, but no more may come, 
Now we would sell the everlasting hills! 



[127I 



Israel 

{Written for the Neiv Immigrants' Protective League.) 

SINGER of hymns, by Sinai who adored 
The Fire, the Trumpet, the eternal Law; 
Builder of temples, from Zion's hill who saw 
Dawn smite the heathen with Jehovah's sword ; 
Exiled of nations, long for no reward 
Keeping thy Sabbaths and thy Feasts with awe; 
Victor of sorrows on a bed of straw, 
Come unto us, O Israel of the Lord! 

Here, past the Gentile seas, the stars by name 
Shine with the Ages' welcome; here anew 
Thy rainbow towers; here the mountains wait. — 
Come, and then fill us with thine holy flame ! — 
We have a word to speak, a work to do. 
If once, like thine, our soul be consecrate. 



[128] 



Inauguration Ode 

ONCE more to that high Capitol austere, 
After the manner of our fathers dead, 
Once more to-day, with starry ensign spread, 
And pomp republican of cannoneer 
And trump and wheeling horse, we come to hear 
The oath of state and solemnize with dread 
The coronation of no royal head, 
On this great morning of our secular year. 
Once more a new chief rises to proclaim 
A fixed intent in first pronouncements bold. 
Prophet and pontiff of the Nation's fame. 
No less than guardian of her gates and gold. 
Naming the parting Consul's goodly name — 
Even now a proverb, like the men of old. 



This festival is from a broad decree: 
The visionary voice of wood and vale, 
The uplands of the rising star, a tale 
Of hundred rivers in the midlands free, 
Savannahs southward by the cape and key. 
And northern mountains at the great white trail, 
And booming headlands in the wind and hail. 
With beacons, flashing out to either sea, 
Declared for this. To making this Event 
Imperial cities half the world apart, 
And homes on many a far horizon went. 
With all of farm and freehold, mill and mart, 

[129] 



Inauguration Ode 

That gives a multitudinous continent 

Its million tasks, its one unconquered heart. 

And now anew, in jubilee of mind, 

Not voluble or vain, we have descried, 

Marshalling to memory our proofs of pride, 

The inscriptions on the ranged years behind — 

Years that are monuments of humankind: 

Laws, Battles, Voyages, graven large and wide, 

We read, and Names where good is glorified; 

And in our heritage our hope we find 

For Times more pure, when, that swift cleansing done 

To which we now awake, each man shall go 

A tribune of the people in the sun; 

For Times more strong, when, arming for the foe 

With love and light, we set the useless gun 

In gardens where our civic lilies grow. 

Nor unto us, a folk so wide away 
Beyond the sloping main we seem to own 
A privacy of stars, O not alone 
To us the Pageant and the Dream! — Fair Day! 
God's witness white to what we do and say! 
Princes and parliaments from zone to zone 
Ponder our Cause; and this thy news is sown 
For all the lands to harvest as they may ! — 
All, from our English Mother, to the old 
Dominions of the immemorial Nile, 
[130] 



Inauguration Ode 

And commonwealths below the Southern Cross, 
From China, shedding her barbaric gold, 
To what remains on that Sicilian isle 
Of ruin and irrevocable loss. 

And all whoso, my Country, do divine 

(Dwellers at hand, or over leagues of foam) 

What we devise to-day before this Dome, 

Know that the matter for great song is thine, 

Nor died with Caesar on the Palatine. 

And the great singer once again shall come, 

Magnanimous to drive the meaning home 

With solemn voice and full sonorous line! — 

Some younger brother of the pristine blood 

Of Milton, the voice men likened to the deep, 

Who, in the immortal midday where he stood, 

Beheld the puissant Nation on the Steep — 

As 'twere an eagle mewing his hardihood. 

As 'twere a strong man rousing himself from sleep. 



[131] 



VII. Five Cities 



The Aery City 

( Gdtttngen, Germany.) 

THE aery city, temple and tower, sleeps. 
O'er the broad fields, around her and below, 
Lies the blue waste of far unfooted snow. 
And takes no shadows from her walls and keeps. 
The sun, like death, upon the blank sky creeps, 
With pallid disk of silver, tacit, slow — 
No winds betwixt this sun and city blow — 
In adamantine day the city sleeps. 

I pace beside her. All is dreamy cold. 

I listen, and no music answers me : 

I name the lost, the lucid hills of old. 

The violet banks and the melodious lea, 

The virgin breasts and sky and year of gold — 

Mine, ere I crossed the unreturning sea. 



[135] 



Venice in Rain 

{Early Morning,) 

THE island city of our orient dreams 
Sleeps in a mist from haunted seas, and gray 
Horizons dimly shut her from the day, 
And rain is on her streets and understreams ; 
From off St. Mark's no crimson banner gleams; 
No balcony with floating silk is gay; 
No sails Byzantine dot the sunless bay; 
Yet now a beacon, now a window beams! 

And by old marble houses here and there 
Her gondolas lie moored at step or door, 
Like barks funereal about to bear 
This lyric race unto no earthly shore, 
With Titian's painted dames of russet hair 
And Tasso's lute — away forevermore. 



[136] 



The White Metropolis 

{Madison, Wisconsin.) 

THE white metropolis of winter rose, 
In icy splendor over drift and dune, 
Midway from setting sun to rising moon. 
On frosty skies of gleams and afterglows. 
An aery place, a Venice of the snows, 
With towers of crystal arabesque and rune. 
And shimmering columns by many a frore lagoon, 
She slumbered in imperial repose. 

So still, so inland from the booming seas. 
So clear, so far from battle-smoke or fen. 
So cold, beyond all pestilence and fire — 
A city with its own eternities. 
Where hate nor love might enter in again, 
Nor human cry, nor sorrow, nor desire. 



1 137] 



New York in Sunset 

THE island city of dominion stands, 
Crowned with all turrets, o'er the waters* crest, 
Throned, like the bright Cybele of the West, 
And hailed with cymbals in a million hands 
Around her: yet serenely she commands 
The inland vision and the ocean quest, 
The new-born mistress of the world's unrest, 
The beauty and the terror of the lands. 

She sees the fields of harvest sown for her, 

She sees the fortress set beside her gate. 

Her hosts, her ships, she sees through storm and fire; 

And hers all gifts of gold and spice and myrrh. 

And hers all hopes, all hills and shores of fate, 

And hers the fame of Babylon and Tyre. 



[138] 



Urbs Triumphans 

{San Francisco.) 

" The Genius of that city is not dead" 

« 

I WOKE in sunlight, young and warm, 
And vowed to give my dream a form. 
I clove the cliff, I raised the stone, 
With Orphic music of mine own. 
Till soon the inviolable thought 
To portico and palm was wrought. — 
A marble city of the free, 
With gardens at the western sea! 
I made a house with lighted crypts 
For mysteries and manuscripts; 
I carved a stair to galleries, 
And gave all men the brazen keys; 
I gave to Seer and Sayer halls 
With ancient wisdom on the walls; 
I stored a Doric vault w^ith gold, 
As measure just for bought and sold ; 
I filled for v^^atch and ward a dome 
With civic lore of Athens, Rome ; 
I struck the lyre with unbound hair; 
I fostered rites of praise and prayer. 
And East across her mountains brought 
Devices of her sturdy thought, 
From rattling loom a flag with stars, 
From flaming forges scimitars; 
And West from island shore to this 

C139T 



Urbs Triumphans 

Sent quaint perfumes and artifice, 

In bamboo dwellings multiplied 

By white-robed Buddhists almond-eyed. 



But ere the morning moon's eclipse 
In seas, beyond the homing ships. 
Earth smote my beauty, and my towers 
In flame were withered with my flowers; 
And o'er the dread reverberations 
Red rose the silent sun of nations. 
Then kings on far pavilioned slopes 
In starlight asked new horoscopes; 
Then sullen priests, with hand to eyes, 
Muttered the Sibyl's old replies; 
Then islands and dominions proud 
In litanies of terror prayed; 
And hid within the fiery cloud, 
I only was the Unafraid. 

Could earth be one with my desire? — 
Earth, sprung from zones of solar fire! 
She plants a vale with fern and tree, 
And sinks it down the sunless sea; 
She hangs the crags with vine and branch, 
And shatters with the avalanche; 
She wreathes her brow, she rends her breast, 
She knows no worst, she seeks no best. 
[140] 



Urbs Triumphans 

She claimed the form, but the design 
Was, is, and is forever mine! 

Behold in Java and Ceylon 

The silent ages slumber on. 

Their jungles, where the tiger crawls 

By sultry moonlit waterfalls, 

Hide ruined palqces and halls — 

Huge cities, dim, grotesque, and damp, 

Where ebon door and ivory lamp 

Had mocked the lightning and the rain 

Ere Tyrian trader coasted Spain. 

They perished by their soma bowls; 

They left no hieroglyphs or scrolls; 

Their names are lost, and legends tell 

The earthquake smote them and they fell. 

But in my larger towers to be 

The bells will shout with brazen lips 

To cities over land and sea 

A jubilant apocalypse! 

And o'er my gates shall stand the line, 

By my imperial decree: 

" I am a Symbol and a Sign, 

A Witness and a Prophecy** 



ti4i] 



VIII. The Unjust 



Prefatory 

T ET no man carve upon my monument, 
•*—' Thinking to honor what he loved of me, 
When I shall rest: '* He had no enemy " — 

not to this, believe me, w^as I sent; 
Even as I labor w^Ith my own intent 
For sun and stars and earth's security, 

1 get myself good haters — let them be: 
Carve not this slander on my monument. 

*' Nay," but I seem to hear my friends protest, 

Who, though for me still ready to combat. 

So often are given to untimely jest, 

*' We, who have known the breed you're railing at 

And found you most yourself when angriest, 

Will spare you any pleasantry like that." 



[145] 



Mein Tischgenosse 

THAT head close-cropped as bowl or cannon-ball, 
The snub-nose and the smirk of a mustache, 
The puffy cheek, seamed with a villain gash 
Got in a duel with a corporal, 
That speckled vest, the ring upon the small 
Left finger, where the ruby used to flash, 
That air of " ladies-I-possess-the-cash," 
That tone of " gentlemen-I-know-it-all " — 

My long lost enemy ! — O how we'd glare 

Across the table in the dear old days. 

When cherries ripened in the German air, 

And through the window shone the summer haze, 

While Fraeulein Emma sat between us there 

And served demurely Leberwurst and Kaes\ 



[146] 



The Editor 

I MET you first, when once for livelihood 
I roamed Broadway, a vagrant from the boat, 
A song of life for sale within my coat. 
My soul on fire for all things large and good; 
And there before your desk of walnut wood 
With wide-spread shanks you smoked your pipe and 

wrote 
One of those quips the smart set loves to quote. 
And looking round leered at me where I stood, 
A dreamer and a lover. . . . 

I marked your beard. 
Frizzled and brown, your cold gray eyes, the tone 
That meant " I rate men merely as the herd 
May serve my turn — what is it ? " As one reared 
Among the mountains, conscious of mine own, 
I bowed and went my ways without a word. 



[147] 



A Hypocrite 

YOUR sleek hypocrisy in white cravat 
May cheat your grocer on his office stool, 
Your oily accents, plausible and cool. 
May please your widowed tenant and her cat; 
And pompous pride, in broadcloth, fed and fat, 
May seem an oracle in Sunday school — 
And yet I know you both for knave and fool ; 
So spare your grinning and put on your hat. 

Eternity itself were scarce enough 
To learn a true man's quality, were he 
Still but the humblest of a peasant stripe; 
But the poor tinsel of your proper stuff 
I mark, established artist though you be. 
With one glance sideways as I fill my pipe. 



[148] 



In College Days 

TWELVE years ago. And can hate work so long, 
Through seasons of so many a star and flower, 
So many a mountain day and ocean hour, 
So many friends who gave me song for song? 
Twelve years ago. Though life with splendors 

throng, 
That youth of sallow skin and visage sour — 
My first encounter with the evil power — 
Is still the slanderer who did me wrong. 

Yet my old hate is but the poet's hate 
Even for the ideal villain of the mind — 
The mind alert forever to create 
Its perfect type from every form it find — 
The man himself could enter at my gate 
Like any stranger with his dog behind. 



C149] 



The Insulting Letter 

THANKS for that insult. — I had too much peace : 
In the stone tavern down in yonder vale 
For a brief space too much of cakes and ale, 
Too much of laughter. An ignoble ease 
Had lured me from my vows and destinies, 
I had forgot the torrent and the gale, 
The cliff, the sunrise, and the forest trail, 
And how I throve by nature but with these. 

Thanks for that insult. — For it was your pen 
Stirred the old blood and made me man again. 
And crushing your letter with all thought of you, 
Inviolate will and fiery dream, I rose; 
Struck for the mountains, put my business through, 
And stood victorious over larger foes. 



C150] 



My Defense 

WHEN Fate trod madl)^ on my garden bed 
And took her from me in the early May, 
Just as she tucked the living seeds away 
With those deft fingers, kneeling near the shed, 
'Twas not enough that I should see her dead 
And my house shattered ; not enough — but they 
Who hate my sort found villain things to say 
And mantled me with slander where I bled. 

But my defense, who saw and judged the whole, 
Because she loved my passionate sad soul, 
And deeper purport of my larger aim, 
Spoke from those Places that the world denies — 
Those Incommensurables with sea and skies — 
** They cannot harm you : I am still the same." 



[151] 



The Laird of Leith 
(r. L. D., 1904.) 

MEN say, who heard him In the gardens read, 
" Quaint connoisseur of verse and jest and 
flower, 
And courtly and patient in the evil hour, 
This was a goodly gentleman indeed." 
But I, who kept the house and from his greed 
Hungered lean years on second-best and sour, 
And mixed the drink that gave him speech and power. 
Through all the soul that's left me break and bleed: 

Not for myself; but for the city's just, — 
Each kindly heart that struggles in the face, 
Each honest hand that points, or voice that sings; 
For when a hard man's laid away in dust, 
Such praise is to the praisers their disgrace. 
And one more outrage to the higher things. 



tlS2] 



Epilogue 

READING my words, where stands incoTporate 
For good or 111 — as rough-hewn marble bust 
With shadow sprawling In the workshop's dust — 
Each solid visage of the souls I hate, 
Whom next (I asked myself) to contemplate, 
From somber memories of old disgust? 
But these were all; and beautiful and just 
Rose in the soul of me my good and great. 

Indeed, what men and women have I known 
In my long journeys for the truth of things! 
What sweet musicians and what bards full-grown, 
What sturdy husbandmen at harvestings ! — 
And city by city with a voice its own 
Hailing the sunrise and the King of kings! 



[153] 



IX. 



. and the Just 



A Dedication 

{For a privately printed collection of verse.) 

YE gave me life and will for life to crave: 
Desires for mighty suns, or high, or low, 
For moons mysterious over cliffs of snow, 
For the wild foam upon the midsea wave; 
Swift joy in freeman, swift contempt for slave; 
Thought which would bind and name the stars and 

know; 
Passion that chastened in mine overthrow; 
And speech, to justify my life, ye gave. 

Life of my life, this late return of song 

I give to you before the close of day; 

Life of your life! which everlasting wrong 

Shall have no power to baffle or betray, 

O father, mother ! — for ye watched so long. 

Ye loved so long, and I was far away. 



[157] 



With Some Manuscript Poems 

(To Ludivig Leivisohn.) 

THIS charge to thee. Because I hold thee free 
On stream or mount or at the temple's base, 
As one not wavering to pride in place, 
To brazen trumpet or to golden fee, 
As one who In the pools of life can see 
Still somewhat of old dignity and grace, 
Still somewhat of the bright reflected face 
Of cloud or sky or moon, this charge to thee: 

I fear the pest of all-involving night, 
I fear the fumes that, gathering round my head. 
May choke to silence the one word of might 
Life laid upon me : comrade, I am dead — 
Thou livest, report me and my cause aright. 
And lay for love a laurel on my bed. 



[158] 



The Sculptor 

{For R. r. M.) 

I WROUGHT unaided, save 
By wind and wood and wave, 
And night and Mars the red, 
And poets dead. 

No man from sun to sun, 
Seeing me, said, " Well done " ; 
No woman smiled and chose 
For me a rose. 

But thus my arm at length 
Did win a silent strength — 
Thus here the statue stands 
For all the lands. 



[159] 



A Presentation 

{To W. R. N., ivith "Fragments of Empedocles in English 
Verse.") 

IN my last winter by Atlantic seas, 
How often, when the long day's task was through, 
I found In nights of friendliness with you 
The quiet corner of the scholar's ease, 
While you explored the Orphic liturgies. 
Or old Pythagoras' mystic One and Two, 
Or heartened me with Plato's larger view, 
Or the world-epic of Empedocles: 

It cost you little; but such things as these. 
When man goes inland following his star, 
When man goes inland where the strangers are, 
Build him a house of goodly memories: 
So take this book in token, and rejoice 
That I am richer having heard your voice. 



[i6o] 



In Reply 

{To G. S. V.) 

I PONDERED how to answer gift with gift — 
Your amber vellum with some book of gold 
In crimson letters, that for you should hold 
Meet harvest of some elder poet's thrift — 
And heart beat wildly, and my soul did drift 
Up life's dim eddies to the days of old. 
When we together, wandering passion-souled, 
Saw round the Mountain cloud and tempest lift. 
Showing the Sungod and the Lyre. 

And then 
The distant magic of your verse I heard 
Louder, and marked strange visions far and wide, 
And, as one rapt beyond the light of men, 
I murmured (altering a familiar word), 
" The marvelous boy who conquered in his pride." 



[i6i] 



Invitation 

{For G .) 

COME, voyage with me ! Somewhere in ocean day 
The porpoise bound from wave to wave away! 
And in the sun the distant sail we'll see, 
Guess what its lading, what its port may be; 
And when the twilight purples In the blast, 
And the red lamp is hoisted up the mast, 
How bright our visions, our desires how free! 
O sweet my lady, overseas with me ! 

Over the seas there Is a golden hall 
Where some old king set pictures on the wall ; 
Through the arched hangings In the door, I saw 
The robed Hidalgo and the Cardinal. 

There reels the Bacchus with his cloven crew; 

Diana bathes, Acteon's hounds pursue ; 

The comely damsels, seen by Veronese, 

Will drink the wondrous wine the Saviour drew. 

And overseas are gardens of delight; 
There antique urns, so still and cool and wiiite, 
And a carved Venus on a scolloped shell, 
Gleam In the moon of blue Italian night. 

There the tall cypress on the terrace looms 
0*er shadowy roses of old-world perfumes, 

[162] 



Invitation 

And down the marble steps, by Tiber's reeds, 
The fireflies dart among the Roman tombs. 

And overseas an inland lake there lies, 
Where by a castle, under mountain skies, 
Sails the slant shallop, with the one white wing, 
On waters bluer than a mother's eyes. 

There slope the vineyards in autumnal peace 
Where loved and lingered the New Heloisc, 
And the far Alps are touched with rose, and day 
Dies, and the mellow Angelus will cease. 

Thither, O thither! and in the nights between 
We'll watch the stars upon the deck unseen, 
Trace their designs with finger — thus and so — 
In ancient legends telling what they mean, 
And think how once the same stars long ago 
Guided Ulysses to his island queen. 



[163] 



Lady, Not Mine 

{For E — .) 

LADY, not mine the courtier's gracious part 
To kiss thy hand in hall when lamps arc hung, 
And, with a poised address and ready tongue, 
Speak as befits thy gentle birth and heart; 
Nor mine to linger when the guests depart 
And offer, after every song is sung, 
The delicate verse that names thee fair and young, 
Sweet rose of ladles, lady, as thou art: 

But were we met in such a spot, I'd say: 

" Come, let us take the moonlit marble way ; 

The nightingale is in the cypress tree; 

And past the terrace the stream glides on to sea; 

And when beyond the dim hills dawns the day, 

The morning star shall sing my song to thee." 



[164] 



The Phantom Child 

WHERE'ER I go, in flowers or snow, 
In spring or winter tide, 
Through cities bullded long ago, 
O'er prairies waste and wide, 
A sweet, a wild, a phantom child 
Goes ever at my side. 

The sunlight in her hair that lies 
Seems borne from o'er the sea, 
There is a token in her eyes 
Of skies that used to be 
(The violet dyes of summer skies), 
When she looks up at me. 

She laughs as one untouched by fears, 

She laughs and takes my hand. 

She wanders with me through the years 

And on from land to land. 

But yet she cannot see my tears. 

Nor would she understand. 

She takes my hand; she sees me still 

The laughing lad of old, 

She thinks we wander on the hill 

In plots of white and gold, 

She stops to hear the whippoorwill 

In woodlands dusk and cold. 



[165] 



The Phantom Child 

And though I know our hills are far 

And oceans ebb and flow, 

I have no music, mirth, nor star 

Whose grace I cherish so — 

A memory that no sin can mar 

Nor sorrow overthrow. 



[i66] 



New York Days 

{To Ludivig Leivisohn.) 



T 



IS something for a poet's lip 
Our memorable comradeship. 



The Empire City of the Isle 
Threw down on us her awful smile. 
*' My fate be on you," said the Voice ; 
"Aspire, and if you can, rejoice. . . ." 

We entered, through a portico, 
By ample steps that flanged below, 
A dome supreme and luminous. 
But housing statues not for us; 
And sullen made o'er marble tile 
Dumb exit through the brazen stile: 
The college of the liberal arts 
Was not the college of our hearts — 
We had some other ends to win. . . . 

We saw the Iron ships come In 

From Brooklyn Bridge, the civic towers 

That loomed too large for earth of ours, 

The pits between, the smoky pall. 

The stony shadows vertical 

Aslant up many a windowed wall. . . . 

I've read that in the Middle Age, 

When Dante made his pilgrimage, 

[167] 



New York Days 

Each Tuscan baron, born to feud, 
Who housed in city walls imbued 
With blood of Ghibelline and Guelf, 
Built a high watch-tower for himself, 
And travelers over Alps looked down 
On many a grim imperial town 
That rose in rugged silhouette 
Of parapet by parapet 
Without a spire, a tree, a home — 
'Twas thus with Pisa, Florence, Rome. 
But here it seemed some giant broods 
Had raised the bulwarks of their feuds 
And mastered Titan altitudes! 

We watched on slopes of Morningside 
Broad Hudson wrestling with the tide. 
Or from the granite balustrades 
The sunset o'er the Palisades, 
Where glowed the Cosmos in the west, 
Like lightning flashes made to rest 
And lie an hour manifest. . . . 

We passed in moonlight down the malls 
Beneath the dusky citadels; 
We wound from curve to curve in cars 
On lofty girders under stars; 
We drank in music-halls, aflame 
With lantern green and scarlet dame; 
[i68] 



New York Days 

And held, where passion most was rife, 
Our fevered talk of human life. . . . 

And through the snow, the wind, the gloom, 

We journeyed to each other's room. 

In those lamp-lit aerial crypts, 

Piled with our books and manuscripts — 

So far above the flash and roar 

We seemed encaved forevermore 

Upon some cliff or mountain shore; 

We read in bardic ecstasies 

Catullus or Simonides, 

Or chanted verses of our own 

In slow sonorous monotone, 

That sometimes clove so true and free, 

To us 'twas immortality; 

We shared the agony of tears 

Pierced by the ignominious years. 

And times there were when we were three, 

But late it grows and where is he? 

And I long since was Inland driven 
To climb the hills of God as given. 
While you again are by those seas 
With more of vision, power, peace. 
We overcame. But 'twas the press 
Of no ignoble restlessness — 
Outside the law yet not outside, 

[169] 



New York Days 

By austere issues justified, 

And justified, were all else vain, 

By brotherhood of song and pain. 



[170] 



To Friends 

THESE verses to my friends; for scattered far 
In many si land, O friends of mine, ye arc. 
Do ye remember, too? O ye who hear 
White Mountain echoes all the northern year, 
And ye who see snowfields of cotton-boll 
In Carolinas, and ye twain who cull 
The poppies on Italian fields and seize 
Those golden sunsets for Rome's galleries, 
Do ye remember? Ye of Lac de Geneve, 
Between blue Jura and our own Saleve, 
Do yc remember, Franks of Switzerland? 
And ye in utmost Moscow, with the hand 
Secret and steady for that freedom yet 
Ye swore at Gottingen, do yc forget? 
And ye beneath the Drachenfels am Rhein, 
Where books and wine and song and mellow shine 
Of quiet suns made life almost divine, 
And Fatherland, true Fatherland of mine? 
And ye who walk the cities of the West, 
And feel alone the teeming world's unrest, 
Once felt together — and thou, too, tried and brave, 
Who scatterest violets on an English grave, 
Dost thou remember? 

The same stars arise 
All round the earth but lead us otherwise. 



[171] 



In Memorlam 

{Borden P. Botvne.) 

THE gates of time swing to: our wisest head, 
Our soundest heart, our loftiest soul is dead. 
But death like this, crowning a long success, 
Gives exaltation to our helplessness, 
Repeating, louder than all vain lament, 
'Gainst death itself the one great argument — 
Even this: a man so disciplined in truth, 
In freedom, labor, courtesy, and ruth. 
So disciplined, amid earth's age-old wars. 
To see even here the light of all the stars. 
Must be, wherever God will have him come, 
With the eternal anywhere at home. 



[172] 



X, Translation and Paraphrase 



The Creation of the Morrow 

{From the Sanscrit.) 

YAMA was gone. The gods consoling said: 
" O weep not, YamI," and they raised her head ; 
But ** Yama is gone, he will not come again," 
She murmured nor would yet be comforted. 

Then mused the gods: "She weeps, remembering still 
Their sleeps and kisses on the purple hill — 
Let us create the night." — The night was born 
With starry shades and winds invisible. 

So came the morrow that ere then was not, 
And many morrows — YamI left her cot. 
And played with flowers on the mead in mirth, 
Tossing them idly. Yama was forgot. 



[175] 



Heraclitus, the Obscure ^ 

{For W. R. N.) 

I. 

SAID Heraclitus on the palace steps, 
Beholding wide : " Ephesians, ye are mad ; 
Ye feed like cattle, hearing no strange sound; 
Ye crawl like blind-worms, seeing not a light 
And a far flame; ye sleep, wine-drenched and dull, 
And know the Logos not. The Eternal Law, 
The Weaver of night and day, and body and soul, 
Ye will not know; although each son of man 
For that same Law shall fight, as for a wall. 
And yield no foot. What few have lit a lamp. 
In the dark night they wander and damp fields. 
And turn much earth and scatter sod and sand. 
Grubbing for fools' gold, while the lamp goes out 
And they are wide from house. For vain are eyes 
Unto barbaric souls. 

"Mad folk, mad folk! 
Along the highways, after olden use. 
Reel the crazed votaries with the phallos raised 
And Dionysos hail! and obscene girls 
Uncloak their lust unshamed. Ye kneel and beg 
A gift of some vile stone ye name a god — 
Zeus, Aphrodite, Here, Artemis — 

1 Based upon the Fragments, but the historical Heraclitus 
was a Basileus, not a King. 

[176] 



Heraclitus, the Obscure 

But hear no thunder, see no moon. Ye lave 
Your crimes of blood with steaming blood away — 
Lustration wise as who has fouled his hands 
With the green dung should lave his hands with dung 
And deem him clean! 

"Mad folk! and how ye bark, 
Like hounds, at me ye know not. As the shag 
And lap-eared ass, blinking between the gold 
And yellowish chaff, ye take the chaff at last — 
Twelve thousand of ye value not one good — 
And shall I rest the king of such as ye. 
Speaking a Law no king yet ever spake, 
Ye comprehending not? — There lie my robes 
For who may find them. Naked as the night 
I will go forth, I will return no more." 

And so he passed to where the tropic hills 
Stood blue behind the city, and the tides 
Swept long unfooted sands beyond the walls. 

n. 

Said Heraclitus standing by the sea, 
Beholding wide : " The Law shall not be lost. 
The fire descends from heaven upon the sea. 
Then from the sea whirls up the water-spout. 
Mixed with black rolling thunder and quick flame. 
To heaven again. So fire to water, water to fire 
wends, 

[177] 



Heraclitus, the Obscure 

And water unto earth. Lo, all things change, 
But though none know the Law shall not be lost. 

" Bathe, laughing children, in Cayster stream. 
Under hot day; ye bathe O never again 
In this same stream, which j^et is not the same; 
For all things flow, for all things flow forever. 
And though none know the Law shall not be lost, 

" The sea-fish shoal about the headland rocks 

Deep in blue water; but those I enticed 

Out to the air are dead on the salt grass; 

And men whose white sails lured them to the main 

Lie still below and sea-weeds wrap their skulls. 

The sunbrlght day reeks foul with purplish death, 

The brack and deadly ocean teems with life; 

Each element to each and after his kind. 

But though none know the Law shall not be lost. 

" I hear far battles hid beyond the clouds 
That float on the western waves — there is new war 
Somewhere on coast or plain; but all is war; 
The father of all, the king of all is war; 
And some he makes to gods and some to men, 
Some slaves, some free, creating, slaying all. 
Lo, peace is strife, and strife is peace forever. 
Man dies his life and lives his death each day. 
But though none know the Law shall not be lost. 

[178] 



Heraclitus, the Obscure 

" Only the Rhythm, only the Law abides. 
The Pendulum that measures life and death, 
And all the forms of fire, swings unchanged 
Under the Law, which will be called high Zeus, 
And yet will not (for 'tis above all men, 
But all gods too). . . . And day and night return, 
Winter and summer, autumn and spring return. 
And the world-aeons of fire-death and -birth. 
And though none know the Law shall not be lost. 

" For I will speak. The Sibyl, wild and shunned, 
Endures in memories of a thousand years — 
Though all her words were turbulent and dark, 
Endureth she, for through her speaks the god." 

IIL 

Far from the city deep in autumn night 
He laid his scroll in shrine of Artemis — 
Where strangers found it after many years. 



[179] 



Achilles and Athene 

{A Picture from the Iliad.) 

WHEN Wrath had got the heart of Thetis' son 
And toward the bench, where Agamemnon 
sate, 
With glaring eye and shaggy breast dilate, 
He made, his hand on hilt, to slay anon 
The King of men for Brisels, dearly won 
And darkly threatened, thus to close debate, 
The white-armed Here, from Olympus gate, 
Sent down Athene : there she stood and none 
Beheld, save only swift Achilles; there 
She placed her fingers on his yellow hair, 
And as he turned, astonished, to upbraid, 
'Tut up thy sword," she chlded, " and forbear." 
And Thetis' son was silent and obeyed, 
Holding the promise of a goddess' care. 



[i8o] 



A Home-Coming Long Ago 

{Catullus, XX XL) 

OMY gem of almost-Islands and of islands, Sir- 
mlo, 
Whatsoever, wheresoever lucid inland waters flow, 
Wheresoever out in ocean sun may shine or wind may 

blow! 
O how gladly, O how madly I rejoice again to be 
(After all the Asian lowlands wandered over wearily) 
Here at last, my little island, safe at last with home 

and thee! 
What so dear as cares completed when the mind lays 

down the load. 
And the way-worn feet that wandered take again the 

homeward road; 
And upon the bed we longed for we can go to sleep 

again — 
O alone reward enough for all the labor, all the pain! 
Hail, my Sirmio, the lovely, greet 5^our master and be 

gay; 

Greet him, all ye Lydian billows, plashing up the 

sands at play — 
With your laughter greet Catullus, back again with 

you to-day. 



IiSi] 



A Roman Pleasantry 

{Catullus, XXVI.) 

YOUR country-house is not exposed 
To any blustering gale — 
But, since your mortgagees foreclosed, 

It's now exposed for sale: 
And this exposure, none can doubt, 
Is likely, friend, to freeze you out. 



[182] 



The Sail 

(From the Russian.) 

WHITE gleams the lone sail far from shore 
In purple mists and boundless wind; 
Wliat seeketh she in lands before? 
What has she left in homes behind? 

The foam is thrown about her prow, 
Her bending mast is beat with spray; 
But ah, no hope she seeketh now, 
And from no hope she rides away. 

Beneath, blue streams of ocean lea; 
Above, blue day in east and west — 
But for the wild storm yearneth she, 
As if amid the storm were rest. 



1 183 1 



Buddha 

{From the German of Arno Holz.) 

BY night around my temple grove 
watch seventy brazen cows. 
A thousand mottled stone lampions flicker. 

Upon a red throne of lac 
I sit in the Holy of Holies. 

Over me 
through the beams of sandalwood, 
in the ceiling's open square, 
stand the stars. 

I blink. 

Were I now to rise up, 
my ivory shoulders would splinter the roof, 
and the oval diamond upon my brow 
w^ould stave in the moon. 

The chubby priests may snore away. 
I rise not up. 
I sit with legs crossed under 
and observe my navel. 

It is a blood red ruby 

in a naked belly of gold. 

[184] 



Choice 

{From the Norwegian of Bjornson.) 

MY choice be April, then, 
In which departs the old. 
In which the new takes hold, 
With hubbub round again — 
For peace is not the best, 
But doing things with zest. 

My choice be April, then, 
Because it storms and sweeps. 
Because It smiles and weeps. 
And owns the strength of ten — 
Because it stirs the powers 
Wlience summer and its flowers. 



IiSs] 



The Ideal 

{From du Bellay.) 

IF this our life be briefer than a mom 
In the eternal, and the years drive hence 
The unreturning days without defense, 
And perishable be all things ever born. 
What weenest, soul, imprisoned and forlorn ? - 
In these bleak regions where were joy and whence ?- 
When for thy voyaging to the bright Intense 
Thou hast the wings, the lovely, the unshorn! 

There is the good which each good man desires, 
The rest to which the unresting world aspires, 
The lyric love that wipeth every tear; 
And there the soul before the great white throne 
The immortal beauty shall behold and own. 
Whose voice and shadow it had worshiped here. 



[186] 



Rondeau 

DU temps que j*etait belie: I dreamed of late 
That you were old, Marie, and by the grate, 
With book and eyelids closed, you said the rhymes 
That took you back to Paris and the chimes 
Of Montmorenci and the garden gate. 

How old, how old, Marie: my lady sate 
As wan and withered as the eldest Fate, 
And crooned, " He sang to me in other times — 
Du temps que fetait belle/' 

And when I woke, I woke no more in hate: 
I heard the oriole singing to his mate, 
I saw the plumed castanias and limes, 
And morn's horizon binding all the climes, 
And knew no words of death more desolate — 
Du temps que fetait belle. 



C187J 



Mignon 

{For Helen.) 

KNOW'ST thou the land where bloom the citron 
rows, 
In dusky leaves the golden orange glows, 
And soft a wind is borne from bluest sky, 
And stands the myrtle still, the laurel high? 
Know'st thou it well? — 

O there, O there 
Would I with thee, O my beloved, fare! 

Know'st thou the house? On pillars rest the beams; 
The hall it shines; the shimmering room it gleams; 
And marble statues stand and look at me — 
(What have men done, O my poor child, to thee!) — 
Know'st thou it well? — 

O there, O there 
Would I with thee, O my protector, fare! 

Know'st thou the hill, its path in clouds and gray? 
The mule he seeks through mountain mist his way; 
In caverns dwell the dragons* ancient broods; 
Down plunge the cliffs, and over them the floods. 
Know'st thou it well? — 

O there, O there 
Lies our own way. O father, let us fare! 



T1881 



XI. Midway Upon the Road 



Midway Upon the Road 

MIDWAY upon the road, encountering Death 
(Unseen before, or seen so far aside) 
Death, the revealer and the proof of Life — 
And, though hereafter I may cross new streams. 
And voyage unto new Isles, and see new towers. 
And hear new voices, not for aught of this 
Shall I be other than I was. The man 
Encountering Death midway upon the road. 
When he Is statured equal to the trial. 
Shall walk thereafter other than before — 
Not sorrowing forever, but resolved 
To realize the purport of himself. 
Subduing haste and passion, serving men 
With nobler thought and action In the day. 
And sleeping night by night a goodly sleep, 
Tented with quiet memories of his dead. 



[191] 



For the New Year 

AY you have good in the Four Seasons: 



M' 



In Winter, may you read beautiful books, watch 
the fire leap and crackle in the grate, and 
see through the window the full moon on 
the drift and trees; 

In Spring, may there be children at the table, 
and through the open door sight of blossom- 
ing shrubs and sound of singing birds; 

In Summer, may there come to you friends from 
over mountain and sea, and may you find 
shady groves and cool springs wherever you 
walk; 

In Autumn, may you teach others gentleness and 
courage and truth, and look at the sunset 
from quiet hills. 



THE END 



[192] 



SEP 25 ^-^ 



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